


Experience Points

by el_em_en_oh_pee



Series: growing stronger [1]
Category: Disney RPF, Little Mix (Band), One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anxiety, Cisgirl!Zayn, F/F, F/M, Genderswap, M/M, Video & Computer Games, cis swap, cisgirl!direction, cisgirl!niall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 07:56:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/708359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/el_em_en_oh_pee/pseuds/el_em_en_oh_pee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The good news is that Simon has decided to let Zayn start officially developing the game she and Liam have spent years talking about creating. The bad news is that, because Liam is bedridden after a debilitating accident, Simon puts the new girl, Niall, on the project with Zayn instead. The worse news is that Niall is just Zayn's type.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Experience Points

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't have made this fic happen without help from the usual suspects and some new faces, too, so: first off, thank you to [Bee](http://boybandhugs.tumblr.com), without whom this fic literally wouldn't exist. I asked her to give me a quick Ziall prompt to warm up. She asked for a high school AU. 40,000+ words later, I have fulfilled none of her requests, but I hope this is an adequate substitute.
> 
> Thanks also to [Julia](http://cunniallingual.tumblr.com) for sending me links to approximately ten million different Ziall masterposts when I needed inspiration, [Jesse](http://himaryan.tumblr.com) for encouraging me to rant about the process whenever I needed to despite not even being in the fandom, [Sam](http://dazy-laze.tumblr.com) for the eternally appreciated eleventh-hour Britpick, and [Kristin](http://teapotters.tumblr.com), for making the accompanying [fanmix and cover art](http://8tracks.com/batgirled/experience-points), which is so very, very perfect, and you, for reading this incredibly self-indulgent fic.
> 
> Most importantly, thank you to my best babe [Caitlin](http://berrypayne.tumblr.com), for holding my hand through this entire process, reading each and every section as soon as I finished writing it, and assuring me that it was good enough to post. Baby, you're my forever girl. ❤
> 
> (standard disclaimer applies: this is such an incredible work of fiction oh my god. all of my knowledge of video games comes from watching other people play)

"You've got this," Louis says, voice warm over the phone. "Zayn, you know you've worked so hard on this for so long. The concept art is amazing. The coding is great, especially for something that isn't even in pre-production yet. They're going to love it."

Zayn laughs, mirthlessly. "You don't know anything about coding," she tells him. "And you only saw my _sketches_." Also, she doesn't have a proper ending planned out for the game yet, so that's another problem.

"No," Louis says. "Well. I mean, that's true. But I play a lot of FIFA, so I consider myself an expert at video games."

"It's a good thing you're cute," Zayn says, even though Louis's words have got a tiny smile playing around her lips. "Seeing as you're absolutely useless otherwise."

Louis laughs. "Just because you make them," he teases. "I don’t find you impressive at all."

Zayn takes a deep breath, lets it go. There's a reason that Louis is her absolute best friend and has been for over ten years now, and it's not just because he's absolutely fantastic at diffusing stress. "Should've gone with psychology, mate," she tells him, knowing he'll be able to keep up with her train of thought. "Instead of the whole drama route."

"Mmmmm," Louis says. "But then I’d have to charge you for all these middle-of-the-day calls." He pauses. "Wait, hey, maybe I should've done."

As Zayn listens to him talk, she twirls in her desk chair, eyes roaming over the stacks of papers and folders and thumb drives scattered about, cataloguing all of them, making sure nothing is missing. "I know it's good," she tells him, finally. "This demon hellspawn code-child of mine. It's just – Liam –"

"Yeah," says Louis, heavily, quietly. "I know." He knows everything about the way that she and Liam had been tossing around the idea for this game for years as they worked their way up the ladder at the company together, half-competing, half-assisting each other along the way. The way that they started developing the game when they were supposed to be finalising other projects, Zayn sketching out a vague map while Liam wrote scraps of plot during meetings about the latest big-name sequel. The way that everything went abruptly to shit a month ago so that Liam couldn't work on the project anymore and how Zayn dropped everything else she was working on to push this through. 

Basically, Louis knows exactly why this is so important to Zayn. 

"I can do this," Zayn whispers, and then louder, "I can do this." 

"You can do this," Louis agrees, and then: "Go get 'em, babe."

+++

Zayn's heels click against the parquet floor. Her hair is in a high ponytail with a carefully-sculpted pouf in the front, all sleek and straightened instead of in her usual artful mess with the sides braided back and the top tumbled into curls down her back, and she's wearing her tightest charcoal-grey pencil skirt and blazer set, push-up bra and semi-sheer button-down shirt accentuating her small-but-shapely tits. Her makeup is impeccable, and it should be – she's spent enough time making sure her lipstick isn't smudged anywhere and that her eye is expertly applied, and she's ducked into the loo at least three times since her phone call with Louis to make sure that nothing has gone horribly awry.

She is dressed to kill. The damp spots under her arms that would hint at the tension underlying her every move are hidden by her blazer, and the smudge of sweat on the manila folders that she has clenched in her hand is almost unnoticeable. It's just – emotional determination that she's been feeling for the past month about how important it is to get this game going aside, she's been developing this game for what feels like _years_ now, and she doesn't want a sloppy appearance to be the reason all of her and Liam's hard work goes to waste. 

When she reaches Simon's office, the door is closed. She hesitates in front of it, debating knocking, but goes to sit carefully on the leather lowback couch just outside instead, smoothing her skirt across her legs as she sits down and then squaring the folders directly onto her lap.

"Hey," someone says, and she looks up, abruptly. There, on the other side of the ugly fake fern that Simon somehow hasn't got rid of yet, is a girl slumped back, blonde hair frizzing out from where it's caught into a loose bun, almost like she'd forgot about it and put on a hat for a while. She's simply dressed in a seersucker blue shirt and a khaki skirt and low-heeled leather mary janes. "You here for the development meeting?"

"Yeah," Zayn says, frowning slightly, because who even is this person? "Um. Yes. I don't – recognise you?"

The girl flashes a bright grin at Zayn. "I'm Niall," she says. "I'm new."

"Zayn," says Zayn, faintly. "I'm, uh. Not new." She hadn't realised there would be new people at the meeting. There _shouldn't_ be new people at the meeting. Well, not really. Half of it is about a game that has been in the works for almost a year, and Zayn knows everyone on that team and no one has mentioned someone new.

The other half of the meeting is about the game she and Liam came up with, and Liam obviously can't be here, not anymore, not since – 

Well.

Either way, she doesn't understand why there'd be someone new at this particular meeting. Unless she's just sitting in for experience. "Are you an intern?" she asks.

Niall laughs. Zayn didn't think her question was that funny, and certainly not funny enough to merit Niall throwing her head back and laughing with her entire body, but there you go. "No," she says, finally. "I'm a recent hire but I’m not an intern."

"Oh," says Zayn. "Sorry."

"No worries," Niall says, grinning. "I suppose one day my youthful face will be a blessing instead of a curse."

Zayn just stares at Niall, frowning slightly. She's not usually the kind of person who gets totally thrown off by new things – she does to an extent, but Liam always took the cake on that one – but she's been so single-mindedly focused on getting the draft of this game to a stage where she can actually give an accurate overview of the whole thing that talking to an entirely new person is sort of out of the scope of her abilities right now. Still, she doesn't want to be overwhelmingly rude. "How old are you?"

And, well. Maybe she needs to work on being polite when she's distracted. Niall doesn’t seem to take offence, though. "Twenty-eight," she says, grinning at Zayn and – yeah, yeah, that's Zayn's age, too. As Zayn keeps staring, Niall adds, "Irish, Virgo, 34B, younger child, double chicken breast wrap and a side of spicy chicken wings, single and happy about it, green – I can keep going, mate, you'll have to stop me –"

"Sorry," Zayn says, finally. She debates telling Niall that she's nervous, but then, she's only just met her. "What?"

Niall raises an eyebrow. "Just thought I'd tell you more facts about myself till you were satisfied."

"Sorry," Zayn repeats. She adds a half-smile this time. "I'm pitching a game in the meeting so I’m a little distracted. But that was all really interesting, I promise."

"How does that work here, anyway?" Niall asks. "The way we did it at Neopets was well different from how we did it at Ubisoft."

"Um." Zayn shakes herself, forces herself to be more present. "The people working on the commissioned Hunger Games video game adaptation will go first, and that will probably take half an hour or so just to update about how far they are with graphics and coding and fixing that glitch where half the trees are like, intangible – I dunno, the guys who work down the hall from me keep complaining about that – and then I'll have ten minutes or so to show the thumbnails and describe the gameplay and if Simon likes it he'll ask me what I need next to work out a proper rough version to play." She takes a deep breath when she's done talking, because her nerves are fizzing again, and vaguely registers a dull ache in her fingers. She unclenches them from where they've been gripping the sides of her folders much tighter than necessary.

"What's your game?" Niall asks, crossing her legs at the knee. 

Zayn feels a brief pang of jealousy. She loves dressing up and everything, but when she's as anxious as she is now she just wants to be wearing a comfy pair of skinny jeans or jogging bottoms and a t shirt, not this uncomfortable suit getup with a skirt so tight that it totally precludes crossing her legs anywhere but at the ankle. "Just an idea that me and a friend have been tossing around ever since we started here six years ago."

Niall lets out a low whistle. "So it's important."

"I reckon you could say that, yeah."

"Well," Niall says, and she's poised to say something else but Simon pushes the door of his office open then and motions them in and Zayn doesn't hear the rest of it.

+++

Zayn spends the first thirty minutes running over her speech in her mind instead of paying attention to the project update from the team working on the Hunger Games spinoff. When Simon calls on her to speak, she clears her throat quietly, stands up – she's not short, but she's also not particularly tall, and Louis, who knows body language better than anyone she knows, once told her that standing to speak during a meeting like this gave her an element of power that she just couldn't quite get sitting down – and opens her first manila folder.

She focuses on enunciating and speaking at an even tone, careful not to let her desperation leech into her voice. She wants this game more than she's ever wanted anything, especially now, wants Liam to be able to come back to it when he does come back to work (because it's _got_ to be a 'when,' it can't be an 'if' at all). Wants this legacy for the both of them. 

"We all know the superhero canon," she says, firmly suppressing the urge to let her hands fly up and check her hair by pressing them against the table. "We know about the superheroes and the sidekicks and the different multiverses and everything. And they're important – the superheroes that Marvel and DC and everything have put out there have all been properly and significantly linked to cultural and historical shifts and have helped the readers of comic books confront and adapt to change." She pauses, opens the first folder. "But what if people could become their own superheroes, outside of the pre-existing multiverse?"

If she were someone listening in on her speech, she'd probably find it a bit hokey, to be honest, but Simon loves big words and Louis gave her the same lesson he gives his actors and students in delivering proper monologues, so she doesn't let that stop her as she holds up pictures and plugs in examples of code and talks everyone through the way that this game is "Definitely not open play, but nowhere near linear, either" and is all about the importance of the sidekicks – though there is a playable hero option as well – and how it draws elements of various types of action and adventure and strategy games. When she's done giving a very vague outline of the ending of the game, depending on which particular path players decide to take – superhero or sidekick, for example, and the various moral decisions they make along the way – regretting the fact that she and Liam never settled on something more concrete before everything happened the whole time, she takes a deep breath, resists the urge again to check her hair, and sits down smoothly. 

Something nudges her leg when she sits and, glancing up, she sees Niall grinning at her. Which is – relieving, honestly, and gives her the courage to look at Simon.

Simon has got a finger pressed to his temple, the others propped under his chin as he thinks. After the longest twenty seconds of Zayn's life, he nods once. "I like it," he says, and an overwhelming rush of relief overcome her. "That can be our next actionable project." He purses his lips, thinks a moment, and then says, "Niall."

"Yes, Simon?" Niall says, looking away from Zayn's face. 

"I'm putting you on dialogue and plot," he says. "Zayn has a great eye for overall gameplay and detail and the artistic scope of games but she could use some help tightening up storylines. Zayn, Niall – the two of you will present a more detailed overview next month, with graphics and code samples, obviously, and we'll decide whether to put it in proper production then."

Zayn's world shatters under her. That's _Liam's_ job. That's always been Liam's job. Simon can't just give it away – 

_But he can_ , a tiny part of her reminds her. _He should_.

"But – " she starts, because just because Liam can't pitch in right now doesn't mean Simon should _replace_ him.

"I think a month is enough time," Simon says firmly, staring Zayn down, and, yeah. Getting the game out there is more important than anything else right now, there's no question about that.

But she doesn’t have to like Niall being assigned to it.

+++

Niall, as it turns out, is four doors down from Zayn. Her space is done up with posters from footy teams and various high-profile games from other companies – _dangerous_ , Zayn thinks, grudgingly respectful – and one very large poster of – "Is that the Altador Cup?"

Niall looks pleased. "You're familiar with it!" she says, sitting down at her desk. "Most people don't admit to that."

"I had to procrastinate during a game convention once, too," Zayn says, glancing at it again. "Back when it was a new thing."

"It's not what I'd call my crowning achievement of my time with them," Niall says, fondly. "But it was definitely in the top five."

Zayn just gives her a look, because it's frankly very difficult to believe Simon would hire someone with _Neopets_ on their resume. But there, she's being uncharitable again. Surely Niall has got lots of experience through Ubisoft. "No personal pictures?"

"All these pictures are personal," Niall says, very seriously. "Just not personally of me. Except for that little Yooyu in the corner of that Neopets one; Mark said I inspired its design."

"...Right," Zayn says, because she hasn't been on Neopets in about five years and hardly remembers anything about it beyond giving up on a quest halfway through, because Liam was finishing up troubleshooting a spotty area of code quicker than she was finalising background graphics and she didn't want him to beat her out in the competition, back when they were more friendly competitors than actual friends.

"Anyway," says Niall, reaching behind her head to pull out the hair grips holding her bun up. She shakes her head briskly and her hair tumbles down to just past her shoulders, tangling and curling a little at the ends. She cracks her knuckles and scoots her chair closer to her computer. "I've got to finish up a bit of dialogue for another project, but we should probably set a time to meet about developing that game of yours further, yeah?"

"Yeah," Zayn says. "Um, I’m probably going to go work on it right now, to be honest. I don't really have anything else on my plate right now."

"But we should sit down soon and you should tell me more about what you're thinking so I can be more on your level with the concept," Niall says, and then pauses to type in her computer password. Zayn averts her eyes until Niall adds, "Formally or informally, whichever."

Zayn pats for her pocket, but of course she doesn't have one with this suit she's wearing. "Stop by my office on your way out tonight?" she says. "I'll give you my card."

Niall laughs. "Formal, then," she says, and then: "Yeah, sure. Sound good."

So Zayn walks on to her office. She pauses outside the door, tells herself not to look at the door opposite hers, but the urge is too strong.

There are no new notes tacked to the cork Liam taped on the front of his door when he and Zayn were moved into proper offices four years ago, and Zayn has pretty much everything on there memorised already. Everyone's already sent flowers and notes to him personally but there's still a veritable forest of scraps of paper pinned and taped and tacked on, saying _I miss you_ and _Come back soon_ and _I patched that final code, hurry back so we can start a new project!_

Zayn hasn't written anything. Her contributions are five tiny little doodles: the two of them playing Battleship with the caption _analogue down time_ ; Liam holding a bouquet of balloons; Liam as Batman and Zayn as Huntress; the two of them as characters in the very first game they worked on together; and of Liam's dream man. The doodles are mostly covered up by other people's notes, but hey. Liam will see them anyway. He _will_. He'll come back and see them. The fact that Simon hasn't passed Liam's office on to someone else is indisputable proof of the fact that Liam's job is just waiting for him to get better enough to return.

She runs her fingers down the doorframe, sighs, and turns to go on into her own office.

+++

When Zayn gets home, stockings and heels stashed in her bag, feet jammed into flip-flops, she's a bit damp from her walk from the tube stop to her house because she never, ever remembers her umbrella. Selena's car is parked outside, which means that they'll have actual real food for dinner for the third night this week instead of the takeaway curry from the Indian place around the corner that Louis usually picks up on his way back from work. (Zayn isn't entirely sure how she managed to not die of malnutrition before Louis and Selena reached the stage in their relationship where she would come over and cook dinner a couple nights a week, because both Zayn and Louis are pants at cooking and disinterested in changing that and literally lived off cheap greasy takeaway, frozen ready-meals, and cereal for eight years.)

"Hey, Gomez," Zayn calls into the kitchen, kicking her shoes off and dropping her bag by the door, then flopping down on the couch, legs immodestly splayed. 

"Hi Zayn," Selena says, popping into the room and leaning in to kiss Zayn on the cheek. "I'd hug you but you're all dressed up and I'm floury."

"What's for dinner? It smells delicious."

Selena smiles. "I emailed your mom for some recipes," she says. "To either celebrate or mourn your news, whichever. Lou's just popped out to get a bottle of wine."

"He better get his act together and marry you before I beat him to it," Zayn says, reverently, because Selena is absolutely the greatest girl in the universe right now.

Blushing adorably, Selena says, "I'll tell him you said that," and then, "I have to go make sure I don't accidentally burn your samosas or whatever, so."

"I love you!" Zayn calls after her. "Queen amongst women."

She's just about to turn on the tv when Louis bangs the door open and swoops in. "Honey, I'm home," he calls, presumably to Selena, and then he drops onto the couch next to Zayn, lifting her feet into his lap and rubbing her calves automatically. "How did it go?"

"We've got the go-ahead," Zayn says, and then she laughs brilliantly, tilting her head back onto the arm of the couch because somehow it hasn't sunk in till now that, even though she's not working with Liam on it right now, she's still _got the go-ahead_. "We've – Simon gave me a month to get a more solid draft done before he makes his final decision, but _we've got the okay_."

Louis's hand tightens from where it's now wrapped around her ankle. "That's fantastic, mate," he says, and then he grins, a wicked glint in his eye. "Told you so."

"Thank you," says Zayn, very seriously. "I mean it, just –"

"Of course," he says, quiet and warm, his smile softening. "Zayn, I'm so happy for you." He pauses, thumb moving in idle circles on a spot midway between ankle and shin that Zayn's been considering as a place for her next tattoo for _weeks_ , and then says, "Are – when are you going to tell Liam?"

"Was going to ask Simon to work from home tomorrow and just go and talk to him instead," Zayn says. "But I don't think I can now. I'll probably have to leave early or something instead."

"Why's that?"

Zayn sighs. "Simon's gone and put another person on the project," she says. "Which makes sense, it would be a _lot_ for me to get done by myself in a month, but –"

"But it's no Liam," Louis finishes, and she nods at him. "Who is it, then? Aiden? Geneva?"

"Definitely not Geneva," Zayn says, shuddering gratefully. She has long since learned her lesson about casually hooking up with coworkers. "No, it's someone new."

"New?"

"Yeah," Zayn says. "Name's Niall. Irish, Virgo, used to work for Neopets, et cetera – don't ask me how I know all of that, because I'm not sure myself. It all happened very fast"

"Niall," Louis says. "A guy, then?"

"No, she's this little blonde thing," Zayn says, and she elbows Louis because she _knows_ that if she doesn't, he'll waggle his eyebrows and say something thoroughly unhelpful like 'so, your type, then.' "She must come very highly recommended, she's got a full office already, and to be put on developing a new game so quickly..." she trails off, contemplating the implications, and doesn’t realise that she's basically zoned out until Louis pokes her side, hard. 

"You okay?" he asks, when she looks up at him.

"Yeah," Zayn says, because she has resigned herself to the situation. "I'll probably get on with her all right."

"Good," he says, smiling, and leans in to brush a kiss on her cheek before dumping her legs back on the couch and standing. "Sel, why haven't I got my welcome home kiss yet?"

"I sent you out for wine twenty minutes ago," Selena calls back, and then she pokes her head around the kitchen door. "Bring it here if you really want _another_ one."

"Duty calls," Louis says, and with a final pat to Zayn's leg – her knee, this time – he heads out of the room.

+++

There are no important meetings today, so Zayn is back in her business casual with her hair braided up and back in a way that technically takes even more time than straightening it into the sleek style she wore it in the day before, but which _feels_ a lot more comfortable (and, yeah, eye-catching).

There's an email from Niall waiting for her, a very simple and direct missive with the subject line 'strategising' and just two sentences inside: _We really should meet about the game today. I think you should show me a good place for lunch around here and tell me more about it, what do you think?_

It's signed Niall Horan, so now Zayn knows her last name, too. 

She responds distractedly, something about popping by at half eleven and they can work it out from there, and spends the rest of the morning adjusting her sketches so the main NPC of the game looks a lot more like Liam and trying to work out how to break the news to him that he's been effectively replaced on their baby.

When Niall knocks on her office door, Zayn looks up from her sketches in shock, because she lost total track of the time and hasn't spent any time thinking about places to eat in the area. Usually she just goes to the Pret down the road from work, if she leaves for lunch at all.

They end up at a Chinese restaurant that Zayn vaguely recognises because Liam used to get food from it all the time. She orders her usual chicken standby and watches in a sort of horrified fascination as Niall proceeds to order what seems like a good third of the menu. 

"Is this the kind of business lunch meeting where we get beer or the kind where that's frowned on?" Niall asks her, pausing at the end of her order, and Zayn doesn't particularly care one way or the other so she shrugs and orders one of whatever Niall is getting, too.

"Are you going to actually eat everything you ordered?" Zayn asks, because she cannot actually fathom it and she's morbidly curious now.

Niall laughs. "I'm cursed with the fastest metabolism in Ireland," she says. "And I have a lot of favourite dishes and I want to see how they taste here."

"I've never heard anyone describe a fast metabolism as cursed," says Zayn, frankly, and yeah, maybe she's pushing off starting the talk of the game, but she wants to hold off on fully accepting that it's not Liam sat in front of her working through all the kinks with her for as long as possible.

Niall flashes a smile at Zayn. "You have now," she says, and shrugs. "I'm always hungry. I'm sure I'll sneak half of it into the minifridge I've got hidden under my desk for snacks for the rest of the week. Unless it's really good and I eat it all now, which, frankly, is entirely possible."

"I see," Zayn says, and she allows herself to half-smile back at Niall even though part of her desperately wants to hate the girl, because, well. She's known her for all of twenty-four hours but Niall just already seems so open and full of life that Zayn can't help it.

The lunch goes smoothly on from there, so much so that Zayn starts to feel a little prickly about it all. The beer that Niall picked out and Zayn just went with is probably the most terrible beer Zayn has ever had, but then again, she tends to stick with wine and mixed drinks more often than not, so. They're not in any stage of any sort of working relationship for Zayn to tease her about it being awful, though, so she just tries not to pull a face as she takes tiny sips in between bites of her deliciously spicy tastebud-overwhelming food. 

The conversation about the game, though. Niall is extremely knowledgeable about everything Zayn brings up – which isn't entirely surprising; she's been in the business long enough, but Zayn is still impressed. Probably because Niall got her start at _Neopets_ , and – well.

"I almost didn't finish uni," Niall says, as she starts in on her steamed pork buns, because Zayn has asked whether she learned the programming aspect of games somewhere or whether she was self-taught. "Ended up doing the last of it part-time, because I'd sent in a totally unsolicited and totally crap flash game to Neopets that I'd worked out in one of my courses. They hated the art but loved the concept, so they brought me on and I ended up learning more there than in school. Reckoned I might as well finish, though, because I just had one year left and I wasn't sure I'd get more jobs if I dropped out, so." She shrugs. "It's a good thing I did; I dunno that Ubisoft would have hired me without it. It's not exactly similar to Neopets there."

"Did they use the game?" Zayn asks, pushing the last of the vegetables from her dish into the center of her plate and trying to decide whether she actually wants to eat them or not.

"Yeah, they redid the graphics and it became like, Attack of the Gummy Dice," Niall says, and glances at Zayn's plate. "Hey, did you get enough to eat? Do you want some of my food?"

"It's okay," Zayn says, holding her hand in front of Niall's fork, because she's now trying to lever some of her buns onto Zayn's plate. "I, um. Don't really eat pork."

Niall looks up at her sharply but doesn't otherwise comment, for which Zayn is relieved. It's always so tough to explain, because Zayn considers herself borderline observant at best, and her eating habits are, at this point, more often than not a force of habit than any kind of dedication to dietary laws, but most people have a hard time wrapping their head around that and she tends to avoid talking about it unless she has a pretty good idea of how any given person will react to the conversation. 

"More for me, then," Niall says, eventually, switching the topic back to the game. "So let me get this straight. You want one course of action to be better the rest?"

"Yeah," Zayn says. "I mean, I don't want to limit the player's options, but I want the game to be more about the sidekicks than the superheroes. Me and Liam really pictured it as a like, subtle message about the importance of teamwork and support instead of like, striking out on your own and stuff. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just like – working together can be important too." She trails off, because Niall is sitting back in her chair, eyes half-lidded as she just kind of gazes at Zayn, which – what? Is she even paying attention?

She must be, though, because she sits up straight when Zayn trails off. "I think that's workable," Niall says, making a note on her (paper) napkin, because somehow or another, both of them managed to forget to bring actual notebooks. "It might take a bit of fancy system manipulation, but..."

"Liam had a plan for that, too," Zayn says, and then makes an embarrassed face. "But I don't really remember what it was. Something to do with following sidekick options and getting better gameplay."

"Well, yeah," Niall says, scratching her head for a moment. "Okay, I'll work on it and run it by you..."

"Friday?" Zayn asks. "Is that too soon?"

"I can get some thoughts down by then," Niall says. "Work out some options."

"Cheers," Zayn says, and as she forces one final sip of her disgusting beer, a familiar sense of excitement at starting a new project courses through her, flooding all the way down to her fingertips. It's almost shocking – she's been bound and determined to see this project through ever since Liam's accident, but she hasn't really let herself feel _hopeful_ or _excited_ about it for the sake of just creating a new game in ages.

As she and Niall walk out of the restaurant and back to work – half an hour later than they should, but Zayn reckons that as they were technically still working, it doesn’t matter as much that they're technically late – Niall takes a deep breath, smooths her hands down her skirt, and says, "So, I've heard a lot about Liam – who is he?"

Zayn freezes, suddenly cold despite the warmth of the weak sunlight filtering down between puffy clouds and buildings. This is absolutely the last topic she wants to discuss with someone new. "He has the office opposite mine," she says. "We came up with the idea for the game together." She presses her lips together, tightening her fingers around the strap of her bag. "He had an accident so he's on an extended leave."

Niall is still silent a couple of minutes later, so Zayn risks a glance at her. Niall's eyes are wide and she's glancing cautiously at Zayn, looking forward every few steps, probably to check where she's going. "Sorry to hear that," Niall says, eventually. "Were you close?"

"Very," Zayn says. "He was – he _is_ my best friend in the company."

They're at the front doors of their building when Niall launches herself at Zayn. Zayn teeters on her heels – less dramatically high and imposing than the ones she wore to the meeting, but still high enough for her to be knocked off-balance – and almost falls over. "Wha –" she starts to say, until she realises that Niall is _hugging_ her, arms thrown around her shoulders, face buried into her neck. 

Before Zayn can even finish bringing her hand up to awkwardly pat Niall on the back, Niall has let go and gone on inside.

Zayn stands outside the slowly-closing door, completely discombobulated, until she comes to herself and catches it to head inside right before it latches shut.

+++

Zayn never thought that she'd be the type of person that nurses would recognize on sight, but then again, she never thought that one of the most important people in her life would get hurt badly enough to merit an extended stay in hospital.

"Hi Zayn," Rebecca says, as Zayn passes the nurse's station. "Here for Liam?"

"As always," Zayn says, smiling tightly – she wants to be polite to Rebecca, and not just because Rebecca is a gorgeous woman who Zayn would totally try to romance under different conditions (so, if Rebecca weren't a married mother of two and one of Liam's primary nurses), but it's hard to show anyone any kind of genuine positive emotion in this place.

"We'll miss him," Rebecca says, and Zayn freezes mid-step until she remembers that Liam is being moved to a proper rehabilitation facility next week. "But we're glad to see him go."

"Yeah," Zayn says. She's not really sure what else to say, but just saying 'yeah' feels a bit rude, so she adds "Cheers" and goes on through to Liam's room.

Liam is asleep, but then again, he nearly always is when Zayn gets there, still. Apparently that happens a lot in coma recovery. Zayn hadn't known that was an actual, like, _thing_ before his accident. She wishes she still didn't know.

She pulls a chair up next to his bed and takes his hand in both of hers. "Hi Li," she says. "You need to get better and come back to work straight away, they've put our game through and we've got a month to prove that it should go on to actual production. They've got this blonde girl working on it with me for now – she's new; you wouldn't know her – and she's nice enough but it's just not the same."

Talking to Liam while he's asleep always feels a bit weird to Zayn, so she lapses into silence and just strokes his hand and stares out the window. All she can see is a bit of building and the cloudy sky with its fading light. She's probably going to miss whatever dinner Louis is having tonight, so she'll have to pick up doner kebab on the way home or something. The dry cleaners will be closed soon, too, so after a moment's hesitation, she takes out her phone and texts Louis _can u get my dry cleaning its at the corner place im with liam right now_.

And then she's staring out the window again, thinking about how fucking _cliché_ the entire situation is, of Liam getting into that car crash and being comatose in the hospital for a full week of sleepless nights (on Zayn's part) as she realised that Liam isn't just her best friend at work and a fun guy to hang out with in her spare time every once in a while, that she loves him nearly as much as she loves Louis and her brothers and her parents.

After an hour or so Liam twitches and his eyes open slowly. "Zayn," he says, voice thick and slow. "Hi."

"Hey," she says, breaking out into a smile and getting up out of the chair so she can lean in and kiss his cheek. "It's about time you woke up, I've been here forever."

"Sorry," he says. The way his words are slurrier now just breaks Zayn's heart all over the place, even though she's pretty sure it can't possibly last. "You know me. I like suspense."

Which is true enough, Zayn supposes. Liam _is_ rather good at increasing the suspense factor of games in the most interesting ways. "You're certainly good at it," she says, and then: "They've put our game through into pre-production. I expect that's all part of your master plan?"

Liam smiles, slow and sweet and crooked. He's still having a lot of problems with muscle control, but he's trying as hard as he always does to get back on top. "Good," he says. "Yes."

+++

Zayn isn't hungover at work the next day, but that's just because she's really good at matching each drink with a lot of water on weeknights. She locks herself inside of her office and draws another doodle for Liam's door – this time a caricature of him singing karaoke, eyes closed soulfully, hair curling out wildly because it's been getting long again where the doctors didn't have to shave it now that he's basically bedridden in the hospital.

When she's finished, she stares at the drawing for a long moment and then pushes it to the side of her desk and gets to work on more detailed worldbuilding for her game. 

Right before she takes her lunch break, she adds a superhero cape to her doodle of Liam. She tacks it to his door on her way out.

+++

Niall knocks on Zayn's office door Friday afternoon, then pops her head in. "I have some thoughts worked out about that gameplay progression stuff," she says. "Can I come in?"

"What? Yeah," Zayn says, gesturing Niall inside. She looks around her workspace quickly – it's a fucking mess, but then again, it always is, so it's not like she's misrepresenting herself at all. She has a second chair in the corner, but it's under her bag, a sheaf of papers, three jackets, and two pairs of shoes. "Hang on," she adds, and after a moment of contemplation, pushes everything but the papers to the floor. The papers she places on the cleanest corner of her desk. "Sorry, I know it's a mess."

"Nah, it's just lived-in," Niall says – generously, in Zayn's opinion – as she pulls the chair closer to Zayn and sits. "You been here long?"

"Four years in this office," Zayn says, proudly, even though she's well aware that it _looks_ like it.

Niall stares around at everything, taking in the mess and the cushions Zayn keeps wedged under her desk for when she wants a nap in the middle of the day and the large Marvel calendar on her wall and the pictures Zayn has tacked up behind her computer: one of her and Louis, taken about a month or two after they met, drunk and laughing and falling into each other, Zayn's hair falling in front of her face, which is half-buried in Louis's neck; one of her and her brothers from the trip she took home when her grandfather died several years ago; one of her parents, taken on their thirtieth anniversary; one of her, Louis, and Selena toasting Louis's hire as a drama teacher at the local college; and one of her and Liam each holding up a copy of the first game they had a massive role in creating, arms wrapped in clingfilm because they'd decided the best way to celebrate would be to get tiny commemorative tattoos right above their elbows, grinning like idiots. 

"It's cosy," Niall finally says, grinning and pulling a little netbook out of her bag. She sets it on the desk and boots it up. "Okay, so I've come up with a list of games with similar gameplay to what I think you meant and sort of hashed out a potential route to go from there. Look over it and tell me what you think?"

Zayn nods and, chewing at the corner of her lip, scrolls through the document that Niall has open. Niall's got the general idea of what Zayn wants, but Zayn adds a couple other references as she goes through Niall's list. 

"You know," Zayn says, after she's gone through it once. "When I was studying for my A-levels, I did a lot of procrastinating by reading these crappy novels. There was one with lots of aliens and time travel or something like that and this guy in it was making a war game where the only way to win was to surrender at the very beginning." 

"That's not what you want, though, right?" Niall asks, frowning.

"Oh no, no," Zayn says, quickly. "It's just where I got the idea for the less-expected route being the most successful."

Niall nods, taking the computer back and changing around some of her notes. Her tongue pokes out of her mouth while she concentrates. It's a little cute.

Zayn sighs and rummages around through her papers to find the hard thumbnail sketches she's been doing for the game and starts a folder on her computer for the actual rough-draft game graphics. "I've been working on worldbuilding," she offers.

Niall looks up from her netbook. "You should probably keep me up to date with everything you're working on," she says, mildly, but Zayn feels chastised anyway.

"Sorry," she says. "I get a little in my head sometimes."

"I thought as much," Niall says, and she flashes a grin at Zayn. "Or, well. You're sequestered away enough for me to guess that." She pauses, then asks, gently, "How did you do it when you worked with Liam?"

"I dunno," says Zayn. "We kind of grew up together here so we were always used to tossing ideas back and forth. Also he's really persistent."

"How about this," Niall says. "We meet every day for lunch to catch each other up. And if that's not enough we'll just... share office space every so often."

Zayn considers this proposition seriously. It's not necessarily within her comfort level – she really _does_ just like shutting her door and working on her own most of the time – but it's probably for the best. "All right," she says. "That seems reasonable."

"Great!" says Niall. She pushes her chair back and stands. "So like, send me anything you have already tonight – I mean you've been working on this for a while, right?"

"Years, unofficially," Zayn says.

"Yeah, so you know a lot more than I do about what we're doing here, so if you send me whatever you can I'll look over it this weekend and we'll be in a better place to really start on Monday."

"Okay," Zayn says. She's not feeling overwhelmed, not really, not by Niall _or_ the project, but then again, she kind of _is_. "I can do that."

Niall smiles again, closing her netbook and putting it back into her bag. "Zayn," she says, resting a _hand_ on Zayn's _forearm_. "It's like, totally obvious that this is really important to you, so I’m going to try to keep with your vision as much as possible, okay? You've just got to help me get there."

"Don't let that stop you from making suggestions," Zayn says, because even though she's feeling a bit in over her head, trying to turn her brainchild into a reality only like, _without_ the other parental figure involved in the actual creation – or some other nasty clunky metaphor like that – she _is_ professional.

"I won't," Niall says, and with a firm squeeze to Zayn's arm, she leaves.

+++

When Zayn walks into Niall's office the following Tuesday to sync up Niall's documents with hers on her take-home flash drive, she has to stop right inside the doorway and stare for a moment to fully take everything in.

Niall's hair is down and falling all over her face as she dances in her seat to the music blasting from her computer speakers. (Fortunately, all of the offices on this floor are soundproof for when people are testing out the audio on their games.) As Zayn watches, Niall shimmies her shoulders and does this little pointing thingy with her hands, bopping up and down all the while. 

It's so endearingly ridiculous that Zayn doesn't even register _which_ music Niall is blasting until the chorus starts and Perrie's unmistakable voice soars out.

"Is this... Little Mix?" Zayn blurts, before she can stop herself.

Niall jerks and turns. She blushes slightly but, to her credit, she also grins and says, "Yeah. Why, d'you like them?"

"They're good," Zayn says, noncommittally. She does listen to their music – gets to hear the tracks they cut before anyone else sometimes, which means that, by extension, Louis and Selena do, too – though it's weird for her to listen to them too much.

"Good? They're _fantastic_ ," Niall says, deadly serious.

Zayn laughs, because Niall's earnestness is adorable. "Yeah," she says. "They're nice."

"Zayn," Niall says, still very serious. "I don't know if I can have a professional relationship with someone who doesn't like Little Mix."

Laughing even harder, Zayn says, "Trust me, Niall, I like them better than most."

"Ironically?" Niall asks, looking at Zayn suspiciously.

"No, not ironically," Zayn says, "They're lovely girls, good fun to be around."

Niall frowns. "Have you _met_ them?"

Zayn pauses. She usually doesn't draw attention to her connection with Little Mix – there _is_ a reason why she and Perrie broke up, and it has a great deal to do with Zayn just really hating being in the public eye – and she's not certain that she wants Niall to know the extent of it. But they're working together and she's trusting Niall with helping make her and Liam's dream game a reality, so she should probably work on trusting Niall in general. "You could say that."

Niall has completely dropped her cute little pseudo-aggressive intimidation act and is just staring at Zayn in awe now. Zayn has to stifle a fond smile as Niall asks, breathlessly, " _How_?"

"Oh, you know," Zayn says, looking away from Niall, studying her dumb Neopets poster. "Went out with Perrie for a year and a half and that."

"You never," Niall says. " _When_?"

Zayn sighs. "I was still in uni and she was just starting on the X Factor. It was this whole big thing, but we broke up when I was still in uni and before they exploded internationally, so."

Niall is quiet for a long moment, and when Zayn looks over, she's doing that half-lidded vague stare thing again. When Zayn makes a questioning noise, Niall looks up at her. "I don't know what to say," she admits, smiling sheepishly. "I'm – you're _that_ Zayn?"

"Dunno how many Zayns you know of," Zayn says, uncomfortably. "But I yeah, I suppose."

Niall nods. "Do you want me to turn the music down? Does it bring up terrible memories?"

"Nah," Zayn says, smiling now. "Pez and me – and the rest of the girls, I suppose – are still friends, it's just the dating thing that didn't work out."

She's thankful that, even though Niall looks like she's bursting with questions, she restrains herself. Zayn doesn't particularly love talking about the way her and Perrie's relationship ended, back when Zayn was just trying to revise for her final exams and was getting papped coming out of Perrie's house – where she'd been crashing because Perrie was on tour and it was quieter than the flat she and Louis shared – left and right, and all the twitter hate she got because beloved Little Mix singing star was going out with a _girl_ , and a half-Pakistani girl who had been photographed leaving Friday prayers at that. Zayn almost couldn’t focus enough to finish her final art portfolio and was ending up on Sugarscape every other day even though she had absolutely no interest in being famous, but still, she and Perrie both cried for hours when they decided it would probably be easier to end their actual relationship. 

It took a while for them to get to a place where it didn't hurt to be in the same room as just friends, and Zayn often thought that if things were different, if Perrie hadn't been a celebrity, she may have been it for Zayn. But that doesn't bear thinking about. They're friends now. That's what matters.

When Niall finally speaks, it takes Zayn by complete surprise. "Hey," she says. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"Trusting me enough to come out, or whatever," Niall says, shrugging. She pauses, and Zayn is so shocked that she doesn't even try to interject anything, because like, she hadn't even considered that side of things. She's not exactly closeted at work, but she also doesn’t make a point of talking about her sexuality, either, as it has exactly nothing to do with her performance at the company – except maybe for the rare occasions when she's put on a team with Geneva, but whatever. Liam was the only one she ever really discussed the way that she'll sleep with blokes but gravitates towards ladies nineteen times out of twenty, and that was because he's incredibly gay.

Finally, though, the silence starts to drag, so Zayn just says, "Yeah, well," and Niall grins up at her.

"I always fancied Leigh-Anne, myself," she says, lightly, and when Zayn raises an eyebrow at her, Niall raises one right back.

It's not until Zayn is halfway out the door that she remembers she actually went into Niall's office for a reason.

+++

The problem is that Zayn feels totally lost with the game.

She's been doing this sort of thing for six years. She _knows_ how video game development works. But lately, every time she sits at her desk to try and code a bit of the mock-up or build up the graphics, she ends up just drawing characters. Or rather, character. Specifically, she keep drawing the superhero NPC who looks identical to Liam and fleshing him out, changing his costume and altering his special powers.

At lunchtime the day after she finishes catching up on all of Zayn's notes, Niall drags Zayn to this little café that Zayn has never heard of before in her life and sits her down at a table. "Get the milkshake," she advises. "And the toasted sandwiches are perfect."

While they wait for their food, Niall pulls out a notebook and starts sketching rough lines onto it. "Okay," she says. "Stop me if I fuck up."

And then she's off explaining her ideas for the plot progression of the game, showing how, depending on player choices, it could go this route or that one, and sometimes the routes pull back in together and sometimes they branch out even more wildly. 

Zayn zones out a little bit, if she's entirely honest. She gets distracted thinking about how it's Liam's last day in hospital before his transfer, and then she gets even more distracted watching the way Niall speaks animatedly, fingers tapping at the counter when she's not sketching, reaching up to check her hair quickly and tugging at the end of a strand before putting her hand out on Zayn's shoulder and then drawing it back in to herself. Zayn could do an entire character study on Niall and the way her hands move when she talks and the way her smiles are almost half-grimaces when she's mid-sentence, her lips stretching more out than up, and the lines of her eyes when they're half-shut when people talk for any extended amount of time, and the way her hair frizzes up where she plays with it too much and where the snapbacks she wears on the way to work (Zayn's seen her coming in in the mornings) sit before work starts. That is, if Zayn were still at Goldsmiths doing one of her art or animation modules or finishing up her one creative writing course back when she still thought that English was the way forward, or _something_ that demands learning a character front, back, and sideways.

She's drawn back in when the waitress plops a plate down in front of her. "Learned this tricky bit of code that will let us do it. You know how when we were kids people would draw those pointy S things on everything? That's kind of how I picture this plot working, all twisty and going out and in, but I'm pretty sure I've got code for it, ooh!"

Niall breaks off and takes a huge bite of her cheeseburger, and Zayn blinks hard. She can't afford to zone out, not on this game, not _now_.

She pinches her own thigh hard before taking a brain-searingly cold gulp of her milkshake. "Sounds great," she offers, weakly.

"So we'll just need to work out the few possible endings," Niall says. "And then we can start building this thing."

"Yeah," says Zayn.

She can't remember anything about what she and Liam had originally planned for the ending. They never wrote down what little they did discuss, actually, because they had never settled on one specific course of action. There was always going to be more time.

"What do you think?" she asks Niall, ignoring the way that Niall flashes a quick, shocked look at her before turning back to the paper.

"Uh," Niall says. "I hadn't thought of any ideas yet because I was pretty sure you'd have more than enough for the two of us, but I suppose I could work something out."

Zayn considers her options for a moment. She would still vastly prefer Liam to be working on this with her, but he can't, not right now, not yet. "Do," she says, finally, and then, swallowing around a lump in her throat: "You're in this as much as I am now, so obviously you should get some say. And Liam and I – we hadn't settled on anything."

"Okay," Niall says, simply, pushing her hair back with her hands again. "Okay, I'll think about it."

Lunch gets finished rather quickly after that. As they walk back to their building, Zayn tries to set her mind firmly on the task at hand, but it keeps drifting to Liam. She takes out her phone and texts Louis to meet her in Liam's room that night, so they can do a proper good-riddance send-off to the hospital. 

Niall hip-checks her as they approach the doors. When Zayn looks at her, shocked at the way that Niall has just bumped her hips against Zayn's hips and practically knocked Zayn off balance – figuratively, if not physically – Niall smiles at her. "All right, Zayn?"

"Yeah, sorry," Zayn says. She knows that she's been distant all day. She runs a hand along the braids at the side of her head, pushing the flyaways down so that it looks more like a deliberate move than a nervous tic. "I'm just – there's a lot going on."

Niall purses her lips at Zayn. "Tell me about it," she says, and Zayn is about to write that off as simple agreement, when Niall puts her hand on Zayn's arm, firmly. "We're kind of friends, yeah? Not just associates? So like – unless you don't want to, you know. Talk to me about whatever it is."

Zayn shrugs, minutely. "I'm just – basically, there are a lot of things happening at once," she says, stopping just outside the building and taking her cigarettes out of her bag. She's been trying to quit for the past month, and she's down from half a pack to just five or six a day, but she's already had four today and it's just barely noon. 

They're not helping much, not today, but she still waves the pack at Niall before tapping one out. "Do you mind if I--?" Niall shakes her head, gives a go-on type of gesture, so Zayn lights up. 

"I just," she says, after she's had two deep drags and she can feel the smoke swirling down into her lungs, settling her just that little bit. "I've worked on games before and I've played large parts in that and stuff but I've never headed any up, yeah? And I haven't worked on anything without Liam in years – not that you're not great to work with, because I mean, you are, but –"

"I get it," Niall interrupts. "It was weird when I moved to Ubisoft and didn't have Josh throwing paperclips at me during planning meetings anymore."

Zayn quirks a smile at Niall, because that's _exactly_ it. Not that Liam has ever been the paperclip-throwing type, but there's just something about having a familiar face who knows just how to distract you in all the right ways. "Yeah," she says, gratefully. "Yeah, that's it."

"Well," says Niall, pragmatically. "I can't be Liam and I can't pretend to be Liam, so I'm sorry about that."

"No," Zayn says. "Please don't think that I don't appreciate your help, because I really do, you've been great."

"It's okay," Niall says, smiling at Zayn. She's not even waving the smoke away or moving, even though she's downwind of Zayn right now. It's – well. Zayn is touched, is all. "It's pretty obvious that you would rather be working with him, but I don't take it personal."

"That's not it at all," Zayn says. She pauses, takes another drag to buy herself time. "I mean –"

"It's true," Niall insists. "I don't mean it in a like, you're a rude person kind of way. Just – I know what it's like to be used to working with someone and I know what it's like to have a baby project and then have someone new put in on it. You're not making me feel unwelcome or anything. Like, I get it."

"Okay," Zayn says, relieved. "Anyway. I'm sorry I've been a bit distracted lately, because I really want this to succeed, obviously, and you're great to work with, honestly, it's just."

"I get it," Niall says again, and before Zayn knows it, she's hugging Zayn, arms loose around Zayn's waist, body angled away from the lit end of Zayn's cigarette. 

"Thank you," Zayn says, seriously, finally beginning to feel calm. And that's interesting in and of itself; she hadn't thought that her lack of focus was more jitters than anything, but the reassuring spicy scent of Niall's – hair? Something? It smells a bit familiar, and it's definitely calming her down unexpectedly, but Zayn is hesitant to place it as – "Are you wearing _Lynx_?"

"No," Niall says, looking at her incredulously. "How do you smell anything through that – " she gestures at Zayn's smoke. 

"It smells familiar," is all Zayn says.

Niall grins. "My best mate is crashing at my flat while they fumigate his house," she says. "He's got bedbugs. I stole his deodorant because he dropped mine in the toilet."

"Oh," Zayn says. She's not really sure what else to say.

"Hey," Niall says, stepping back but leaving a hand on Zayn's waist. "It's okay to be distracted and lost sometimes." She takes a deep breath, looks Zayn straight in the eye. "Come to me if you need to talk about it, okay? If you need to like, get your head in the game or whatever. I'm good at that, I swear. I'm pretty good at prioritising the stuff that needs to be focused on."

"Cheers," Zayn says, taking a final drag off her cigarette and tossing it to the ground, grinding it out with her heel. "No, seriously. I appreciate it. We're all in this together now and that."

"Yeah we are," Niall says, and Zayn could _swear_ that Niall slaps her arse on purpose on her way inside the building. Probably.

+++

When Zayn gets to the hospital after work, Louis is already in Liam's room, regaling him with tales of the way his students do the craziest things. Liam is awake, half-propped up on a lot of pillows, laughing along to Louis's stories.

When he sees Zayn, his eyes light up. "Zayn," Liam says, actually _interrupting Louis_ , his words as slow and stuttery as they've been ever since he woke up. "Our game in proper production yet?"

"It will be," Zayn promises, moving further into the room and swooping in to kiss Liam on the cheek. She drops one on Louis's, just to be on the safe side. "Niall and I worked on the plot a lot at lunch today."

"Niall," Liam says, frowning slightly, almost like it's a question

"She's the one they put through to work on the stuff you'd usually do," Zayn reminds him, as gently as she can. "She's capable."

"She's blonde," Louis interjects. "A little blonde thing. At least, that's what I hear."

Liam smiles, slow but no less wicked. "Don't forget Geneva," he says, and Zayn sticks her tongue out at him, because she _knows_ , okay, just because Niall is ostensibly exactly her type doesn't mean she's going to try to _sleep_ with the woman; she's learned her lesson about fucking coworkers already.

"She's no you," is all that Zayn says. "But she's working hard and trying to keep it as true to our vision as possible, and that's what matters."

"I suppose," Liam says, and then: "Don’t stick to our plan if it needs to change."

"I don't think that will be a problem," Zayn says, and then Louis is jumping in complaining loudly that he doesn't understand this video game bullshit and can't they talk about whether Liam has encountered any hot shaggable nurses instead.

Before they leave, Zayn manages to catch Liam's hand in hers and ask if he remembers the ending to their game.

"If we talked about it I've forgot it," Liam says, very apologetically. Zayn thinks very hard about things that aren't the fact that the weeks Liam lost, memory-wise, during his coma are coming back very slowly. She offers him a smile.

"We'll just have to work out something really great," she says. "Me and Niall."

"I have faith in you," Liam says, seriously.

"So do I," Louis says, firmly, and he presses a fussy, brotherly kiss to Liam's forehead. "Li, we're going to have to check out your fresh new digs as soon as possible."

"Yeah you are," Liam says, his smile unfurling into a grin. "You better."

"Love you," Zayn says, kissing Liam's cheek again. "Get better so you can come back and finish up this game with us."

"Doing my best," Liam says, laboriously moving his hand over to cover, then squeeze, Zayn's forearm. "Now get out of here, I need my beauty sleep."

Zayn leans heavily on Louis on their way out of the building, even though she's almost as tall as he is in the heels she's wearing. They hold hands the entire tube ride home. 

"This sucks," she says, finally, when they're two stops away.

"He's doing so well," Louis points out, and she sighs and nods, because Liam is progressing by leaps and bounds but it's still all just shit. Just terrible shit.

"Tell me more about Niall," Louis says, once they're off the tube and walking the half-mile to their house. "You talk about the game but not about what she's like to work with."

"Oh, she's great," Zayn says, lighting up her seventh cigarette of the day. She's not doing so well at the limiting her intake thing today. "Really supportive of my vision." She smiles, faintly. "I was a bit distracted today and she gave me a hug and offered to talk about it, it was so weird."

Louis grins. "I like her already," he says, reaching over and tugging the cigarette from Zayn's fingers. She protests, because half the time that Louis steals her cigs, he stabs them out and throws them away.

Today isn't one of those times, though, because he just takes a quick, furtive drag – Selena doesn't like it when he smokes – and passes it back with a little cough and a pointed look.

"I know," Zayn says, because he's been encouraging her quitting for two years now. Still thinking about Niall, she adds, "She's just really... forthright and open. Carefree, almost."

"How very strange," Louis says, dryly. Zayn elbows him, because she _knows_ she's closed off and slow to connect to people, but really, for all of his extraversion and vivacity, Louis is intrinsically the same way. He just goes about showing it differently, tricking people into thinking he's opening up to them when really he's just effusing at them and keeping his true thoughts to himself. It's part of why they get on so well. "I'd like to meet her."

"You – really?"

"You know me and your working relationships," Louis says, which, yeah, he insisted on meeting Liam, too, and now they're almost as good mates as she and Liam are. 

"I suppose," Zayn says, smoking quicker now as they get closer to their house.

"You, me, Selena, and Niall," Louis says, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and drawing her in for a quick squeeze. "After-dinner drinks on Friday. And dancing!"

"I'll ask," says Zayn, doubtfully.

She's already dreading this.

+++

The next time Niall walks into Zayn's office, Zayn is distracted again, so she's drawing another picture of Liam's perfect guy, this time for his rehabilitation hospital room.

"Hey," Niall says, walking up behind Zayn and peering at what she's doing. "Why are you drawing Harry?"

"Who?" Zayn asks, inking in a wide, sly smile.

"He's like my oldest friend in London," Niall says, leaning over Zayn's shoulder and peering at the drawing. "His hair is a little longer and not quite so curly but that's almost spot-on."

"Oh," Zayn says. "Weird. I'm just drawing Liam's dream guy for his new hospital room." 

"Liam's dream guy," Niall says, pulling up Zayn's spare chair – which Zayn now makes a point of keeping mostly cleared of crap – and sitting down on it backwards, so that the back is pressed to her front. When she leans forward, the upper edge presses against her breasts, accentuating them. Zayn glances away. 

"Someone he knew back at home," Zayn says. It wasn't a story she heard much of, because Liam only told it when he was drunk and Liam rarely drank, but there was a boy in sixth form that Liam had fallen for, hard, who moved when Liam was in uni and had never been seen again. "I'll be honest, I'm not entirely certain whether they had a thing or not, but Liam was basically in love with him." She shrugs. "I drew him as a background character into one of me and Liam's first games together after he told me and it's become this thing that I do whenever he's feeling down."

"I wonder," Niall says, frowning slightly, and then she shakes her head quickly. "Nah, that would be way too coincidental."

"Yeah," Zayn says, adding a cheeky dimple and pushing the paper aside. "So what's up?"

"Oh right," Niall says. "I was wondering if you had any ideas for the ending of the game."

Zayn groans, dropping her head into her hands. "I must be terrible to work with," she says. "I've got this whole specific game idea that you're trying to fit yourself into putting together and I still have no idea how it all ends."

"Hey," Niall says, scooting her chair closer. It drags loudly on the floor, which makes Niall grimace. She doesn't stop until she's close enough to rest her hand on Zayn's arm, though. "What do you want me to say, that you're pants at making video games? Because that's obviously untrue."

"Thanks," says Zayn, dryly.

"No, I'm serious," Niall says. "You've been dropped into putting something that's been abstract for so long into an actual workable form and you're a little overwhelmed. It makes sense."

"You're giving me too much credit," Zayn says, but she shakes her head quickly, one of her braids breaking loose from the bun she's wound them up into high on the back of her head today. It slaps against her neck twice and then just kind of dangles against her shoulder. She changes the subject. "Do you have any ideas for the ending?"

"I've got some stuff I've been working out," Niall says. "Dunno if they're in line with your vision, though."

"Show me?"

"I'll send them to you after I get a bit of the specific plot progression finalised," says Niall. She reaches forward and tugs at Zayn's braid, quickly, like she's not certain that she's allowed.

Which she isn't, not really – she shouldn't be, anyway – but Zayn is so shocked that she just kind of stares at the way that Niall's fingers slip down the bumps of the plait and smooth out the curl at the end before letting it drop back against her shoulder. "Um," Zayn says.

"Sorry," Niall says, grinning at Zayn, looking not very sorry at all. "It looked tuggable."

"You'd get on well with Louis," Zayn says, because she can't really think of anything else to say.

"That your boyfriend?" Niall asks, and Zayn has to take a moment because she's so in her head all the time that she sometimes forgets that she doesn't actually share her thoughts verbally most of the time. 

Wondering what exactly Niall _has_ put together about her so far, Zayn shakes her head. "Don't really go for that," she says, because Niall _does_ know about Perrie, so it's not like this is some kind of wild revelation. "Not since my days of wild experimentation in uni."

And, well, yeah, so maybe those days of exploring the possibility of heterosexual love interests consisted mostly of fucking Louis a total of three times after she and Perrie ended things – it had been fun enough, in a comforting, you're my best mate and I love you a lot but I just don't particularly care for your dick kind of way – until they accepted that they really weren't compatible as anything more than friends, but still.

"He's my housemate," Zayn adds. "Best mate since I was eighteen and that. He's a hair-tugger, too."

"Sounds lovely," Niall says, pursing her lips for a moment before darting her hand out and tugging once more at Zayn's braid before gripping the back of her chair firmly and smiling crookedly at Zayn.

Right.

"By the way," Zayn says, because it's probably better to get this on the table sooner rather than later. "Do you dance?"

"Not well," Niall says, looking quizzically at Zayn.

"Yeah, me neither," says Zayn. "But like, Louis likes to know everyone in my life so he said I should invite you out with us after work on Friday."

"That sounds fun," Niall says, nodding as she speaks. Her smile turns teasing, a little. "I'll ask Harry along so you can just go ahead and draw him _properly_."

"Hey," Zayn protests, flopping her hand out weakly in a mockery of a push at Niall's arm. She feels a brief bubble of disappointment rise up inside of her at the thought, honestly, but she frowns at herself until it pops and mostly goes away, because that's ridiculous. "The more the merrier," she says, to herself as much as Niall because she has absolutely no reason to feel disappointed at all and she refuses to allow it. "I'll give you the details when Lou gets them to me."

"Cheers," Niall says. She pushes herself up until she's stood in front of Zayn's desk. "How's um. How's your side of things coming along?"

"I'll get it done," Zayn promises, well aware that basically every time Niall comes into her office lately, it looks like she's slacking off. "I've built up the basic world and enough NPCs for a demo and I'll work on more this afternoon, getting it all streamlined and stuff."

"Good," says Niall. She looks at Zayn for a long moment, almost thoughtfully, before she turns to go.

+++

Zayn doesn't exactly plan on pulling tonight, but she dresses up anyway, taping a sheet of paper to the window on her office door and crouching behind her desk as she trades out her slacks for a super tight pair of black skinny jeans and her button-down and cute lace bra for a super white push-up bra with wide straps that are meant to be seen and a deep red shirt that drapes more than it clings. She awkwardly tapes the mirror she keeps in her bag to the edge of her computer so that she can amp up her makeup, thickening her eyeliner and adding colour. Her nails are already appropriate for going out, because she's never been able to restrain her varnish to neutrals, but she takes the grips out of her hair – she forwent the braids today, so that it would fall straight down her back.

She stares at herself in the mirror for a long moment, suddenly debating getting her hair undercut on one side – maybe to show off her piercings better? But no, she's meeting Louis and Selena and Niall and Harry pretty soon after work; she doesn't have time for spontaneous and drastic hairstyle changes.

Finally, she sighs, puts the mirror back in her bag, and sits in her chair to tug on her kickass boots – heels lower than she'd wear if she were actually planning to pull – and shrug on the leather jacket she wears most places on days that it's not too cold out. 

She and Niall had agreed to meet at the bar Louis picked out, but Niall walks out of the building right when Zayn is lighting up. 

Niall – Niall looks good, and she's wearing these light blue skinny jeans under her jacket, so Zayn supposes that she dressed up, too. "Hey," Zayn says, on an exhale, and Niall startles and turns.

She smiles when she sees that it's Zayn. "Hi," she says, glancing up and down Zayn's body. "When was it that we were supposed to meet?"

"Hour or so," Zayn says. "I left early to get a bite to eat beforehand."

"Me too," Niall says, shoving her hands into her jacket pockets. "Did you have anywhere in mind?"

"Did you want to go with me?" Zayn asks, raising an eyebrow. She wouldn't be opposed, because she had mostly planned on walking to the bar and stopping at the KFC at the halfway point, but having company and maybe going somewhere that isn't just fast food could be nice, too.

"I don't have better plans," Niall says, frankly.

Zayn laughs, smoke puffing out of her mouth as she does. "I don't want to put you out at all."

Niall rolls her eyes. "You know what I mean," she says. "Anyway I used to live pretty close to that bar, there's this great Spanish restaurant. If that's something that you'd be interested in?"

"Better than the fast food I was going to grab on the way," Zayn says, so they head off, trudging through the streets, more or less in step with each other.

Zayn dreads the possibility of Niall asking about the game during dinner. She knows that she's pretty much screwing it, and them, over, but she just – every time she sits down to put real effort into making it miles better than it has been, panic swells up inside of her until she can hardly breathe and her heart is beating hard and her palms are sweating and every time she tries to type in some code, she typos, and every time she tries to adjust the graphics her hands slip on her mouse and it looks awful and she has to undo it.

She hadn't had this problem on this game before Simon put it into proper preproduction, but she's had it on important games that she's worked on before. It sucks, and usually Liam is there to talk her down. Niall probably could, too, if Zayn were to open up to her, but the words stick in her throat because however adorable and encouraging Niall is, Zayn still doesn't _know_ her, not well, not after just two weeks. Zayn just – she doesn't want to put everything into the game just for it to be rejected so she's back to pulling the same old self-defeatist bullshit she pulls every single time, where she can't bring herself to work on it in case she cares too much and it all goes to hell.

But Niall keeps not bringing the game up as they sit and order starters, mains, and sangria (Zayn) and beer (Niall), and dessert. They talk about Niall playing pick-up footie in the park near her flat, and the parts of London they both live in, and what it's like for Zayn to commute to work for an hour each way every day and what it was like for Niall to move over from Ireland.

Zayn isn't quite tipsy by the time they leave the restaurant and head over to the bar half an hour late, but she's feeling the beginning of a buzz. So if she grabs Niall's elbow as they push inside, it's mostly to steady herself.

Louis is sat in the corner with Selena. He's wearing a pair of Zayn's jeans, which means the arse will be all stretched out again, with a nice button-down that Zayn recognises as a gift from Selena for Christmas last year. Selena is wearing her usual fare, a flirty little dress with a swishy skirt and a well-draped top, her hair down in curls. 

"They're over there," Zayn says, leaning in to Niall so that she can hear her over the din in the bar. It's not super busy, not yet, but there's still a good throng of people. "When is Harry getting here?"

"Oh," Niall says, and she actually literally slaps her forehead. "He's doing his foundations programme and he's on duty tonight. Meant to tell you that. I'm sorry, I know you wanted to have a better basis for your drawings."

"Hey," Zayn protests, before she realises that Niall is actually probably joking. "I'll try to survive."

And then they reach Louis and Selena, so there's a flurry of cheek kisses and Zayn introduces them all – "Lou, Sel, this is Niall, my coworker; Niall, this jeans-stealing arse is my best mate of ten years, Louis, and this perfect peach next to him is Selena. She's too good for him but they make it work. She's from Texas."

Louis elbows Zayn and reaches out to shake Niall's hand, mock-formally. "Lovely to meet you, Niall."

"Likewise," Niall says, just as mock-formally, and turns to Selena, grinning. "Always good to meet another ex-pat." 

When she unzips her jacket and shrugs it off, leaving her cute little grey beanie on her head with her hair all pulled back under it, Zayn almost gasps, because Niall is wearing this tight long tank top that just, well. It looks really great on her, is all. It hugs her chest and clings really, really appealingly to the softness of her stomach and rounds over the top of her jeans and partway down her bum and just – it's nice.

But they're coworkers and Zayn doesn’t go there (anymore) so she looks away and raises her eyebrows. "Who's buying first round?"

+++

A few hours later, and Zayn is properly drunk, in the best possible way. Selena drags her to go to the loo and get another drink – the two of them are having vodka cranberries tonight; Louis is still on his quest to convince himself to develop a taste for whisky drinks and Niall is sticking to pints, because "I really don't drink anything else," she'd said, smiling, a bit of foam clinging to her upper lip.

In the loo, Zayn tries to fix her hair, which has got a bit sweaty and flat from the few times Louis has pulled her up to dance to one of their favourite nostalgic songs, but she gets distracted when Selena wraps her arms around Zayn's waist, giggling. "Primping, Zayn?"

"Shut up," Zayn says. "No."

"Niall seems like a very nice girl."

"Yeah, she's a great _coworker_ ," Zayn says, pointedly, frowning because her hair has just about passed the point of no return. She sighs and lets it loose the rest of the way, the front no longer pushed up and back, now just hanging straight down.

"Sexy," Selena says, reaching forward and running her hands through Zayn's hair, pushing it back as she does, until it looks tousled and, admittedly, pretty hot.

"Cheers," Zayn says, reaching into her bag and pulling out her lipstick. "Want some?"

"Is it the dark red?" Selena asks, taking it and uncapping it to investigate. "Oooh, yes."

Zayn reapplies her own after Selena's done. "You know," she says. "It looks a little like we've been kissing."

"Hmmmm," Selena says, staring at Zayn for a moment before darting in and kissing her high up on her cheek. Zayn goes to wipe it off, but it's actually a really great lip-print and it looks good, so instead, she retaliates by pulling Selena close and kissing her cheek, too.

"Now that we look properly debauched," says Zayn. "More drinks?"

She's fully prepared to head back to their table once they've got their next vodka cranberries, but Selena tugs her into the middle of the dancing, doing a little shimmy against Zayn's body. Selena has always been better at dancing than Zayn – which isn't saying much, really – but they're both decent together, and Zayn knows that the way they both have this excellent shiny dark hair and admittedly great bodies means that they look _good_ dancing together. People tend to stare, anyway, and she's about sixty percent sure that it's not because they suck at it.

So Zayn goes for it, pressing in close to Selena, holding her drink out carefully to the side, until the song ends and she breaks away, taking a long sip and glancing around.

"Think I'm going to go out for a smoke," she tells Selena, and Selena wrinkles her nose a little bit but nods, holding her hand out for Zayn's drink to take it back to their table.

Zayn heads out and is leaning against the wall, curling into her lighter as she sparks it so that the wind that has picked up outside doesn't blow out the flame until she can pull it into her cigarette, when she hears Louis talking, low and fast, from somewhere nearby. She starts to look around to see if she can find him when she hears him say, almost aggressively, "I know that she can be closed-off sometimes."

Zayn freezes, because Louis is talking about her. She takes a deep drag off her cigarette, tilting her head back against the brick of the wall and biding her time. 

"She's a bit private," Niall says, non-commitally. "I think this whole Liam thing is getting to her more than she's let on."

"Yeah," Louis says. "She's always private, though." He pauses, and Zayn can picture him running a hand back through his hair. "Even back in uni. Dunno how we became such good friends, if I'm honest, but she's one of the most important people in my life, right up there with my mum and my sisters and Selena, and I love her a lot, so like... just give her time, okay? She's really a wonderful woman."

Zayn feels hot and flush all over. She really shouldn't be listening in on this, even though she already knows everything Louis has said. He actually confronted her about how reserved she was back when they met, in that black box theatre of their uni when she was hid in there to angst over her graphic design course because it was quiet and almost no one used it and it was big enough to hold all of her wild and rambling thoughts, and he had crept in there to practice a monologue for an audition and she had stared at him reproachfully and then left. It had happened three times, him calling loudly after her that she didn't need to leave, before she had just rolled her eyes and introduced herself instead.

She's not entirely sure how they became friends from that, either, but she's well aware that she's important to him and he's important to her and if they were sexually compatible at all Selena might not even be in the picture – or, well, she might still be, but as a third – and she just really loves Louis a lot, basically.

Even though he's lecturing Niall about her.

"No," Niall is saying. "I mean, yeah, I know she's a wonderful woman. I work with her, don't I?"

"When she hits her stride with you, she goes dazzling," Louis says. "So let her do that, yeah? Wait. What?"

Zayn doesn't know Niall well enough to be sure of this, but she thinks that she might hear a smile on Niall's voice. "I get that," she says. "I already worked out that she's a catch, Tomlinson, no need to tell me to play nice."

Something twists in Zayn's belly. She really shouldn't be listening in on this. She finishes up her cigarette with deep deep pulls, so much so that they almost trigger a cough even though she's been smoking for years and is well used to it by now, and then casts it down and stomps out the butt.

She's jittery still, though, so she fumbles her pack out and walks around to where Niall and Louis are stood, tapping another one out as she goes.

So much for cutting down on them, seriously.

"Oh hey," she says, trying to feign shock. The way Louis looks at her makes it clear that he sees right through her – he was always the actor, though, not her. She ignores him. "This is where you lot went to."

Niall's eyes catch onto the pack. "Can I nick one?" she asks, and when Zayn looks at her, completely shocked, she grins. "I'm drunk."

That'll explain it, then. Zayn passes the cigarette she's just taken out and glances at Louis, who shakes his head. "I'm going to go find my girlfriend," he says, pressing a dry kiss to Zayn's cheek, directly over Selena's lip print, and squeezing Niall's forearm as he goes in.

Zayn takes out her lighter and holds it up for Niall, who, instead of taking it, just leans in close and lets Zayn spark it for her, hands cupped forward as she lights up. Zayn's stomach does that twisty thing again, but she ignores it, quickly taking another one out – she's only got two left; she'll probably have to stop and buy more tonight – and lighting it, too. 

"Having fun?" she asks Niall, and Niall nods.

"Your friends are a bit crazy," she says. "I like them."

"Me too," Zayn says, offering a smile. She should open up more. She really, really should, if Louis has to tell people to give her a chance to warm up to them. It's just – it's a little hard, but she's got a lot of vodka in her system, so it should be easier now, right? She's about to start telling Niall something, anything – maybe about her brothers – when her phone goes off.

It's a text from Liam, full of typos and misplaced punctuation. Which is normal, but there are even more now than before his accident. _og,h GODDDDDDD.d??!!_

"Shit," she breathes, looking around her. His new hospital is far away from where she is now, but she can probably get there relatively soon if he needs her. She has all the important things with her – wallet, lipstick, keys, cigarettes, phone, she can go now and Louis can take everything else that she brought home with him. Like her jacket. Fingers flying across the typepad on her phone, grateful that her superpower has always been being able to send drunk texts with a minimum of typos, she sends, _what is it do u need me_.

"Sorry," she tells Niall, as she waits for Liam to respond (he's not responding). She feels ready to fly out at any moment and just jump into the nearest taxi. "Liam just texted and I'm concerned."

"It's okay," Niall says, and it must be obvious that Zayn is ready to run, because she reaches out and rests her fingertips against Zayn's arm, almost soothingly. She jerks them away, though, jumping as her phone buzzes in her own front pocket. She takes it out, frowning, and then raises her eyebrows at Zayn. "It's Harry."

"Yeah?"

"Holy fuck," Niall says, reading the text. "Zayn? What did your text from Liam say?"

"Just 'oh god,' why?"

"Think we're living in a sitcom," Niall says, passing her phone to Zayn and pointing at a text, which reads _New patient is the boy I fancied in secondary school. His name is Liam and he remembers me. Help! .Xx_.

"This doesn't actually happen in real life," Zayn says, slowly. "Right? This never happens."

"It obviously happens," Niall says, her fingers back on Zayn's arm, but she looks as doubtful as Zayn feels.

"It's a small fucking world," Zayn says, bringing her cigarette back up to her lips with the hope that it will somehow settle the way her heart is beating out of her chest, pounding with concern for Liam and relief that he's not like, dying. 

"Hey," Niall says, glancing at Zayn sideways. "You can go see him tomorrow, yeah? Make sure he's doing all right?"

"Yeah," Zayn says, sighing. "You're perceptive, you know that?"

"I'm not," Niall says. "I'm just good at reading people."

"That's perceptive," Zayn says, taking a deep breath and then elbowing Niall, playfully.

Niall grins up at her, eyes squinting. "Well then," she says. "As a perceptive person, my advice to you is that we get you out of your head tonight."

"Cheers," Zayn says, wondering how exactly Niall plans to accomplish this.

Apparently, Niall plans to accomplish it by dragging Zayn back inside and finishing their next round of drinks. When they're done, Zayn is all set to get another one, but Niall shakes her head when Zayn starts heading over to the bar, tugging her in the direction of the dancing instead. "I'm all for getting drunker," she shouts, over the music. "But I think you need to dance more than you need to drink right now."

Zayn lets herself be dragged, and when Niall starts moving to the beat, she shrugs and does too, feeling the music thrum around her. 

Unlike Louis and Selena, Niall doesn't let Zayn leave after the song is done, instead moving closer and closer as they dance on, until they're somehow pressed flush against each other, Niall's hand resting at the small of Zayn's back. Somehow she's worked it under Zayn's shirt. The hot press of Niall's hand against the flesh of Zayn's back feels almost like a brand, the way that Zayn's awareness zeroes in on the feeling of it, dry and warm and sure. 

"Is this weird for you?" Niall calls, over the pounding of the bass. 

Zayn frowns, thinking that Niall is referring to the way her hand is splayed across the small of Zayn's back, the way that Zayn's fingers have somehow worked under the strap of Niall's tank top, until it registers that it's Jade's voice chanting through the speakers over Jesy's beatboxing and Leigh-Anne's and Perrie's backup vocals.

"Not really," she says, grinning at Niall, who grins right back at her.

And that's when it happens. _I could kiss you_ , Zayn thinks, the words flashing through her mind as she notes the way that Niall's leg presses against Zayn's own as they both sort of shimmy to opposite sides, the way that the pressure lessens as they move back toward each other but it's still more or less between both of Zayn's legs, the way that Zayn's hand has somehow worked its way out from under Niall's sleeves till it's round her shoulder, tangling in the ends of Niall's blonde hair. Niall has lost her hat at some point during the night, when did that happen? _It would be so easy to lean in and just kiss you_.

She's moving closer, feeling the sweat collect between her breasts, admiring the way her arm looks against Niall, the dark of her tattoos and Niall's pale shirt, when suddenly she remembers Geneva, and how messy things got after she slept with someone she works with, and how she and Niall are making a game together, and how this is really, really ill-advised. 

She can feel the hot puff of Niall's breath on her cheek as she rips herself away, moving two steps back and breathing heavily. "I have to go," she says, wildly. "I have to – water."

Zayn leaves before Niall can say anything, rushing outside and sitting down against the wall on the dirty pavement outside, feeling the cool of the night air push through until her arms are goose-pimpled all over, chilling where she's sweated, the rough of the brick wall digging into her back.

She closes her eyes and tries to breathe.

+++

It's when she's sat in Liam's new room at the new hospital – or like, _rehabilitation centre_ , whatever it's called – listening to him slowly, haltingly tell her about seeing Harry again and how he thought he was going to have a heart attack on top of everything else that has happened to him lately at first, and how Harry went white as a sheet, that it really starts to sink in to Zayn that she has less than _two weeks_ to finish the prototype for the game and present it to Simon.

Liam is properly upright in front of Zayn for the first time in ages, manoeuvred into a reclining wheelchair by some of the nurses. Zayn pushed him to the window when she got there and pulled up a chair. They're looking out at the watery sun through the leaves of the tree that's just outside. Liam keeps smiling at the birds that land on the branches within his range of vision, or maybe at the memory of seeing this blast from his past.

As she sits, listening to Liam string more words together than she's heard him use in one sitting since his accident, Zayn starts feeling this antsy sort of dread well up inside of her. Two weeks. She and Niall have done a lot of work on the game, but Zayn does keep skiving off to draw fussy little pictures when she should be working on compiling everything together because of her fucked-up need to have something safe to blame their failure on if the game gets rejected.

Something like herself.

"Are you going to have a torrid affair with your doctor?" she asks Liam, when he reaches a break in his story, mostly to distract herself from the way her palms are veritably _itching_ and the way that she honestly feels a little like vomiting. 

"He's a house officer," Liam says, awkwardly, but to his credit, he doesn't point out what Zayn is so afraid of thinking about: that he's not physically up to any kind of torrid affair.

"As if that's any better," she teases, gently, giving his arm the softest punch she's ever given anything. "Still rabidly inappropriate."

Liam rolls his eyes at her. "It's nice to see him again," he says. "And talk to him."

"Apparently he's Niall's friend," Zayn says, staring out the window and willing her panic to subside, because she desperately wants to get to work and do _something_ , stop the way that she's becoming increasingly convinced that they won't finish the game in time. She swallows against a sudden wave of nausea. "From uni or something."

"It's a very small world," Liam says, and for a wild second, Zayn considers telling Liam about her brief flirtation with the idea of kissing Niall last Friday night.

She doesn’t, though, just changes the subject to how his rehabilitation programme is going so far.

+++

When Zayn gets to work on Wednesday morning, she locks herself in her office and turns up her music – a thumping, loud playlist that's more noise than it is melody – and codes, stopping only for swigs of the Monster she keeps under her desk for emergencies.

By the time she's about ready to claw her skin off, both out of need for a cigarette and from the way she's been mainlining energy drinks without eating for about six hours, at roughly 2pm, she's got a very, very tentative framework in place. 

She stumbles down to get kebab around the corner and chain-smoke three cigarettes, but the food doesn't settle her stomach and the cigarettes don't calm her nerves. Which is how she ends up back in her office an hour later, music now switched to some horrible pop song that was popular back when she was in uni, sitting with her back against the door. Tears are leaking out of her eyes, but it's not that she's crying, she's just... well, crying, but it's more of a passive thing than an active one

She's not even particularly _sad_ , and she's pretty sure that it's not from being overwhelmed. 

Or maybe it is, because they still don't have an ending for the game and now that she's had an hour away from her computer, she doesn't like anything about what she did with the coding that morning, and everything is all just basically shit.

So of course that's when Niall comes into her office, pushing on the door and not quite managing to get it to budge more than an inch, because Zayn is in the way.

"Zayn?" Niall asks, so Zayn wipes at her eyes quickly, angrily, scowling at the way that her mascara is all smudged now and hoping that it isn't terribly obvious. "Are you in there?"

"Yeah, just a sec," Zayn calls, wiping once more and then standing up and opening the door properly. "Hi, Niall."

"Hey," Niall says, frowning slightly as she surveys the room. "Is – is everything okay?"

"I got the framework down," Zayn says, trying not to meet Niall's gaze head-on, like that will keep Niall from noticing what a mess Zayn's face is. Zayn isn't a particularly ugly crier, but it's not like her face doesn't turn red, even if it _is_ more of a leaking than a sobbing kind of deal. "More or less."

"That's good," Niall says, encouragingly. 

"Yeah," says Zayn. "We don’t have an ending and I'm pretty sure what I do have from today is shit, but at least it's something."

"Hey," says Niall, frowning. "I doubt it's shit."

Zayn takes a deep breath, and bites her tongue to keep from arguing the point with Niall. "Maybe," she says, finally, charitably.

"Show me," Niall says, walking around Zayn's desk to her computer, so Zayn opens the file and walks Niall through everything she's done, explaining it carefully and pointing out everything that could be bettered.

When she's done, she sits back and waits.

"This is actually really good," Niall says, clicking around a bit and opening the source code. She types a little here and there, tightening everything up or something. "Like, it's a great start. You've got a talent for this."

"Thanks," Zayn says, flatly. She should hope so. She's been working here long enough. But still – "It's not my best, though."

"It's good," Niall says, firmly, leaning over to peer closely at the screen. "I like your designs a lot, too."

"Thanks," Zayn says, shifting from foot to foot and then taking a seat in her desk chair, since Niall is just kind of stood in front of the computer, leaning over. Except sitting down puts Niall's bum closer to face level, and Zayn can't help but notice it and the way it looks in Niall's dark blue trousers.

She looks away, just sort of focusing on the pictures she has pinned up on her wall, and doesn’t even realise that Niall is still talking to her until she touches Zayn's arm, lightly, her fingertips coarse against Zayn's skin.

"Sorry, what?" Zayn asks, looking down at Niall's touch, noting the way that Niall strokes her fingers back and forth lightly along one of Zayn's more colourful tattoos in these little almost imperceptibly short movements. Her breath catches in her throat as she flashes back, briefly, to the club and how she wanted to kiss Niall so badly there.

She still kind of wants to, but it would be _such_ a bad idea.

"I was just saying that I'm really excited about this project," Niall says, shrugging. "Anyway, I came over to check and see if you got my email, since you hadn't replied yet."

"What email?" Zayn asks, and then: "Obviously not."

"I sent it this morning?" Niall says. "It's got more possible endings."

"Hang on," Zayn says. She hasn't exactly checked her email all day, which is generally not the best idea. But she was working and drinking energy drinks until her veins were practically fizzing with it, and after lunch she was that weird combination of charged up and emotionally drained, and now she's just kind of... empty. 

And buzzing from the Monster still.

She pulls up Niall's email and skims it quickly. The ideas Niall has are good, but none of them feel right.

"It's a start," she says, finally, strongly resisting the urge to thump her head in her hands because of how helpless she feels.

Niall surveys her for a moment, almost like she's debating something, and takes a step away, making as if to turn to go. She stops suddenly, though, and turns back to face Zayn head-on. "Let's go for a walk," she says.

"What? No, I need to work on this," Zayn says, feeling the corners of her mouth drawing down.

"No, you need to come with me," Niall says. "Get some fresh air and some perspective."

"Niall, please," says Zayn, tightly. "I just – we have two weeks left and I _need_ to finish this game and it's not going to get done if I don't work on it."

"We're all in this together," Niall says, sing-song, and then she clears her throat, cheeks pinking up a little. "And we have two weeks, Zayn, it is going to be okay."

She says this heavily, looking at Zayn directly, her eyes so clear and blue and pretty and – 

No.

"Maybe," Zayn says, focusing on keeping her breathing steady because she does _not_ have time for a proper panic. 

"It is," Niall says, insistently. "It will get done and it will be _good_ and it will be put through to production and we'll get a full team to work on it. Okay?"

"Maybe," Zayn says again, but she's feeling a little bit calmer.

"Come on," Niall says, quietly. "I always find that a change of scenery is good for clearing my head." Zayn opens her mouth to respond, but Niall just raises an eyebrow at her. "And then I'm more focused when I come back to it."

"Fine," Zayn says, standing up and pushing her chair back. "Whatever. Okay."

So they walk down to the Thames, slowly. Zayn taps a cigarette out of her pack but doesn't light it up right away, just plays with it in between her fingers and tries to ignore the way that Niall's arm brushes against her every so often as they go just as much as she tries to ignore the work piling up in her office back in the building behind her.

When they get to the riverfront, they stop and stare out across the water. Zayn lights up then, offering Niall a drag, but Niall shakes her head. "You can talk to me, if you want," she says, but since it's just an offer, Zayn shakes her head back.

"Thanks," she says. "But not right now?"

"Well," Niall says, "I'll still be here if you decide you do."

"Cheers," Zayn says, with more feeling, but instead of reaching out to Niall, she wraps her arms tight across her chest against the chill in the air and the feelings bubbling up inside of her, the doubts about: what if she's inadequate without Liam? What if she can't do this game on her own? Why does she keep thinking that she has to do this game on her own, since Niall is stood _right there next to her_?

Why does she keep thinking about the way Niall's eyes soften when she starts to half-smile and the way she looks so intent when she's thinking about the plot of the game and the way her eyebrows quirk when she talks and her lips purse right before she's about to speak?

Zayn really needs to get laid, apparently. That would probably sort her right out. 

Probably.

She doesn't feel much better by the time they turn around and head back to work, but at least she's no longer crawling out of her skin. Niall's fingers catch against the sleeve of Zayn's jacket as they walk and brush, quick and gentle, against Zayn's arm. Zayn's breath catches in her throat and then calms.

She smiles at Niall when they get back inside and then locks herself in her office again, working in fits and starts well into the night.

+++

The next day, Zayn feels almost like a human again, for all that she got approximately four hours of sleep after working for over thirteen hours the day before, and puts in a good solid nine hours of coding and fixing graphics and entering the start of the narrative into the prototype and functioning like a normal human being. She even apologises to Niall at the end of the day, when they're both packing up after a strategizing meeting where they determine exactly what they have left to do and how much work it will take. They really are on track, Zayn realises, now that she's feeling less like everything is totally out of her control and looking at everything all nice and written down. They still don't have an ending, and they have a lot of work to do, but – for an intro-level twenty-minute prototype, they're doing pretty well.

There's just something about being around Niall that calms Zayn. She seems so cheerful, like the little things don't get to her when she's focusing on the bigger picture. It's a relief, if Zayn's honest – it's nothing like working with Liam, but Liam is so solid and familiar that Zayn rarely gets panicked with him. She's sure of herself, with Liam. She knows exactly how to navigate their working relationship in a way that is constructive and productive, and they're close enough to joke as they go.

Without him, she's a little bit lost, that's the crux of the matter. It's not that she isn't perfectly qualified on her own – she _is_ – but she's got so used to him and now that he's abruptly not there, its just –

It's hard to deal with, really. But when she thinks about it seriously, Niall is so much more of a blessing than Zayn ever thought she could be, back when Simon put her on the project. 

Which is why: "I'm sure I haven't been easy to work with lately," she tells Niall, after they run what they have of the prototype so far and make notes on things they can do to improve the pitch demo while they try to think of an ending.

Niall gives her an inscrutable look, then shrugs. "You're okay," she says. "Look at how much we've got done in the past hour alone."

Zayn shrugs it off. "Anyway," she says. "I just – wanted to apologize. I'm sure I'm not the most fun person to have been around lately." 

"We all have our days," Niall says, wrapping an arm around Zayn's shoulders and squeezing, reassuringly. "You wouldn't want to see me at my worst."

"Yeah?" Zayn says, leaning her head against Niall's shoulder briefly, because she can.

"Yeah," says Niall. "I can be a right cunt when I've been having a bad time of it."

Zayn lifts her head slightly and gives Niall a long, measuring look, trying to read into her a little bit better. Niall stares back, and Zayn is pretty sure that they end up having the start of an actual moment, so she jerks her head up and stands.

"I'm exhausted," she says. "I think – I think we're good for today."

"Me too," Niall says, grinning at her and getting up to collect her stuff, too. "We've got this, Zayn."

They're halfway out the door when Niall bumps against a potted plant in the hall and drops half of the things she's carrying. "Here, let me help with that," Zayn says, kneeling down to help her shuffle her papers together.

"Cheers, I love you," Niall says, automatically when Zayn hands them over, and Zayn freezes, because she didn't expect to hear that.

"Um," she says, focusing on going after the pen that's rolling away from her right now. Zayn knows that she's got just as much love to give as Niall, so it's not like she's surprised that Niall would say something like that to a friend, but Zayn only gives it to people that she knows really well, that she's really close to. And yeah, she's got incredibly close to Niall over the past few weeks. It's kind of par for the course, developing a game together. She just – it wouldn't have crossed her mind, saying anything like that, not at this stage in their relationship.

When she finally looks back up, Niall is smiling faintly at her. "I mean, we're friends, right?"

"Right," Zayn says, awed again at how free with affection Niall is, and she smiles back at Niall. She doesn't even have to force it.

Before she thinks to say anything else, Niall has gone on down the hall and Zayn is still sitting on the floor, Niall's pen in hand, just kind of stunned by everything about this woman.

+++

Stunned transitions back to panicked, and after tossing and turning all night, thinking about the game and trying not to think about exactly what her feelings about her coworker might involve, culminating in waking up an hour before her alarm and not being able to fall back asleep, Zayn realises exactly how futile it is, trying to finish this game so that it's any good at all. And then she's just so despondent about everything that she can barely get out of bed.

It doesn't help that she texts Liam _i still cant think of an ending_ and he replies _sry i dont rem.emberrrrrrrrr :(_ about thirty minutes later, at about the same time that she should maybe start thinking about showering, or something, and she's thrust back into remembering exactly _why_ Niall is in her life.

She opens up her email on her phone and sends Simon a message about how she's feeling rather sick and will be working from home for the day, and then, after a moment of mentally dragging her heels, texts Niall a message to the same effect.

Louis knocks on her door when he notices that she's not down at breakfast, because of course he does. "All right, Zayn?" he asks, leaning against the doorway and watching the way that she's curled up in a mess of blankets, staring despondently at her phone.

"I'm just being an awful employee," Zayn says, contemplating sitting up and discarding it as a terrible idea. "No big."

Even though he's probably running late, because running late is something that both Louis and Zayn do with ease, he comes into her room and sits down on her bed. "Want to talk about it?"

"Frankly, I'd rather wallow for a few hours and get it out of my system," Zayn says, sighing. "Do we have any errands that we've been putting off for weeks that we need to get done? I'm staying at home today."

Louis contemplates the question for a good long while and then scoots up so that he can lean in and kiss her on her forehead. "Obviously take care of yourself, first and foremost," he says. "But if you really want to put work off by doing housework, I'm pretty sure we've got mouldy stuff in our fridge that Selena hasn't dared touch for months. And I think we're out of bread."

Zayn sighs. Dealing with gross food is her least favourite task. Perfect. "On it," she says, moving her hand over his and squeezing gratefully. "Love you."

"Love you too, babe," Louis says. He catches sight of her alarm clock and yelps. "I need to be at the school five minutes ago."

"Go," Zayn says, making shooing motions with her hands. "I'll be fine. Niall won't hate me, probably. I'll be good."

"Text me if you need anything," Louis says, and then he's gone.

Zayn pulls the covers over her head and tries to go back to sleep.

+++

It must work, too, because the next thing she knows, someone is leaning on her doorbell like there's no tomorrow.

She shoves her phone in her pocket and shuffles downstairs, not even bothering to throw her hair back into a messy bun even though it's getting stringy and lank, probably, still wearing just her pyjama bottoms and a tank top with no bra on. She opens the door a crack to see who it is, and then wider, almost unthinkingly, once she sees the shock of blonde hair.

Niall is at the door.

"What are you doing here?" Zayn asks, completely startled by her appearance. 

"Came to see if you were okay," Niall says, shrugging, her hands shoved deep in her pockets. She's wearing an unbuttoned polo shirt, the hem riding up around her wrists, and has a snapback on, like Zayn has learned that she always does before work. Which might mean that she came straight over to Zayn's house from her own. She pulls her phone out and glances at the time. It's half eleven, though, so maybe not. "Louis texted me the address."

Zayn frowns. "Why do you care?" she asks, honestly curious.

Niall sighs. "Can I come inside?" she asks, and after a moment's consideration, Zayn stands aside to let her pass.

She kind of just stands there limply, watching as Niall looks around the room, fidgeting with the brim of her cap and glancing at the family portraits on the wall – mostly photos of Louis and Zayn pointing at each other while totally trashed, with a couple of snapshots of Selena and Zayn's brothers and Louis's sisters and their collective parents sandwiched in here and there. Eventually, though, she remembers her manners. "Tea?" she offers, standing up straight and letting the door swing shut behind her.

"Thanks," Niall says, nodding, so Zayn leads the way into the kitchen and flicks the kettle on – knowing Louis, it's already full of water. She rummages through the cupboards, which are nearly bare, looking for some kind of food to offer Niall since all their bread is nearly gone– Selena hasn't spent the night since Monday; there's been something going on work, and neither Zayn nor Louis can be trusted with the shopping. Neither one of them really prioritises food.

There _is_ a very crushed-looking box half-full of Pop Tarts in the back of one shelf that Selena brought over from an American care package that her mom and stepfather sent her, because it was a flavour that she doesn't like, so Zayn pulls that down and holds it out to Niall. "Want some?"

"Sure," Niall says, leaning against the kitchen counter and watching as Zayn rips two of the packs open and shoves the four pastries into the toaster. She's pretty sure that they're probably stale by now, but toasting should help with the flavour, right?

The kettle boils, so Zayn pulls two probably-clean mugs out of the drainer in the sink and drops teabags in – tea is the one thing that they never run out of; Louis is good at remembering to pick more of that up when they're running low – getting the milk from the fridge as they steep. "Right," she says, finally, leaning against the counter opposite Niall, meeting her eyes for the first time since Niall arrived. "So."

"Zayn," Niall says, hoisting herself up till she's sitting on the counter. Zayn would protest, because bums where food goes and all that, but like – she never cooks in here, and she's sure Niall's bum isn't that dirty. "You realise I have a vested interest in your well-being."

"Because we're working on a project together."

"Yes," Niall says, raising an eyebrow at Zayn. "And because you're my friend and you're important to me. Also," she says, now waggling both of her eyebrows at Zayn. "You're just so hot."

"You've known me for all of three weeks," Zayn points out, pushing herself forward and handing Niall one of the mugs and the milk and turning to rummage around for the sugar. They mostly just keep it for Selena, because sweetened tea reminds her of home, but it's also always well-stocked. Wherever it is.

"I make friends easy," Niall shrugs, making her tea the way she likes it. Zayn watches, fascinated, as Niall adds sugar after sugar. Living with Louis, Zayn has got accustomed to just not using very much of the stuff. Niall grins at Zayn over the edge of her mug. "But like – Zayn." She pauses, then, tentatively, says, "I feel like you were probably more on top of things back when Liam was still working every day, yeah?" She waits for Zayn to nod, then says, "Have you talked to anyone about why you blame yourself for his accident?"

"What," Zayn says, flatly. "I don't blame myself for – what?"

"Oh," Niall says, looking honestly surprised. "Sorry, I just thought – well." She's quiet for a long moment, during which the toaster pops up. 

Zayn goes to get the Pop Tarts out and put them on a plate, also salvaged from the drainer. She sets it on the counter next to Niall and pushes herself up on the other side of it, reaching around to get her own mug of tea and fumbling with the milk until it's doctored to her liking. She curls her hands around the mug, smelling for a moment before sipping. She kind of wants a cigarette, but she doesn't want to go outside and she doesn’t feel like crossing over to open the kitchen window so she can smoke out of it.

She takes a sip of tea instead, then says, "I mean, I wasn't like, anywhere near his car or anything, so."

"Do you want to tell me what happened?" Niall asks, gently. "You don't have to, obviously, but. Maybe it will help?"

Zayn groans and tilts her head back till it hits the cabinet door with a hollow thunk. She closes her eyes, then says, "Right, so. Once upon a time there was a girl named Zayn Malik who was a real prodigy at video games, like that's not ego, it's just fact. Everyone said so. And she competed with Liam Payne, who was the other young prodigy at the company, to see who could do the most the best the quickest. Somehow they became really good friends and started working on their dream game together in between actual real commitments. It was mostly a fantasy, making the game together, something Zayn and Liam talked about being, like, the first thing they put out when they got a company of their own."

She pauses, takes a burning gulp of her tea, and swallows hard to get the tea around the lump in her throat. Her throat works for a moment, and then she feels Niall's fingers, cool and somewhat clammy, wrap around her knee. Zayn opens her eyes and glances at Niall sidewise; Niall looks steadily back.

Zayn closes her eyes again and continues. "Anyway, they were the baby gays at the company. Like, everyone called them that once they got over the young prodigy stuff. It was a thing. And they were both out to pretty much everyone, but Liam wasn't out to some people back home because they were pretty conservative. So one day he was going to drive to a wedding back home and Zayn was going to be his plus one and he texted her before he left that he'd thought of an ending to the game and he'd tell her on the drive. Only he never got to her house, because some kind of lorry lost control on the road and Liam had to swerve to avoid it and he ended up going off road and his car turned over and he went into a coma and when he woke up he'd forgot, like, several months. As you do. And he's been remembering stuff slowly but he never remembered the end to the game. Yet."

Niall's grip on her knee tightens, her thumb stroking back and forth over the scar just above Zayn's kneecap that she's had ever since tripping over onto a protruding nail when she was a kid. Zayn takes a deep, shuddery breath, and says, "So Zayn decided to prioritise the game, partly to remind him. Only he still hasn't remembered and all of the endings suck, mostly because they're not his because he's never _remembered_ it yet, so Zayn is being a real trial for her new, um, friend? Niall. Who is helping her." She makes a face, opens her eyes, and looks at Niall. "Sorry."

"Hey," Niall says, putting her mug down, crumbs from the Pop Tart she was apparently eating throughout Zayn's grossly long monologue spraying from her mouth. She extends a hand to Zayn. "Come here."

Zayn slides off the counter, a little confused until Niall steps forward and goes up on tip-toes and pulls Zayn into a hug, wrapping one arm up till her hand is cradling the back of Zayn's head – Zayn almost protests, because Niall is touching her gross, gross hair, but then Niall is pressing gently down on Zayn's head until she's bent, a little awkwardly, head pillowed against Niall's chest. _34A_ , Zayn thinks, wildly, suddenly remembering their first meeting, and she almost laughs hysterically, but Niall is making these clucky little sounds with her mouth and running a hand over and over Zayn's hair and suddenly, Zayn doesn't feel like laughing anymore.

Niall doesn’t say anything about how damp her shirt gets when Zayn starts crying. She just holds her through it all.

__

+++

Zayn is ravenous when she's finally done with her cry. Her stomach growls, and she laughs, a little self-consciously.

"Is there anywhere good to eat around here?" Niall asks, still gently stroking Zayn's back. 

"There's this Indian restaurant a few streets away," Zayn says. "I get dinner there like every night that Selena's not over."

"Good enough for me," says Niall. "You up for walking?"

Zayn looks down at herself. "I'm wearing pyjamas," she points out. "And you've got mascara all over your shirt now because I forgot to wash my face last night."

Niall shrugs, unconcernedly. "I mean," she says, glancing deliberately at Zayn's chest and then smirking up at her. "You could put on a bra if you _really_ wanted to, but I think you look pretty good like this."

"Yeah?" Zayn says. Her breasts aren't _that_ big, really. Probably bigger than Niall's, but not by much. She could get away with skipping a bra for a quick trip out. "Okay."

"Really?" Niall asks.

"Yeah, we'll get it to take away," Zayn says, because she doesn’t know if she could handle sitting down and eating in public with no bra, then heads out of the kitchen to rummage around the couch cushions for her favourite cosy jacket. She shrugs it on and gets her bag from under the front table. Niall is right behind her, jamming her hat back on her head. "Shall we?"

So they get curry, spicy and laden with chicken, and take it back to Zayn's house and eat it on the floor in the living room, mostly with their fingers even though they have forks.

"I told Simon I'd be working from home," Zayn says, halfway through her food. "This isn't exactly, you know. Working."

"Isn't it?" Niall asks. "We're, whatsit. Gaining a better appreciation and understanding of each other, so we'll be able to communicate better about the game and get a more comprehensive and perfect final product."

"Sure," Zayn says, snorting, and Niall grins at her.

"I can turn anything around so it sounds official," she tells Zayn, reaching over and stealing some of Zayn's food.

"Hey," Zayn protests, mildly, and then, "But do you really think so?"

Niall looks at Zayn for a long moment. "Yeah," she says, finally. "I do. If you're feeling better about everything you'll be better about, you know, getting things done without curling up into a tiny ball and drawing anatomically inaccurate doodles of Harry or drinking so many energy drinks that every second word is a typo."

"I'm not that bad!" Zayn protests, but she's smiling, because even though, yeah, that's a generally good description of her coping mechanisms, she isn't _that_ bad, and ten years of being best friends with Louis Tomlinson has pretty much ended up with her becoming conditioned to love being teased. 

"No?" Niall says, looking intently at Zayn. Zayn can't look away. Her eyes are so blue. 

"No," Zayn says, almost belatedly. "I'm not."

Niall's lips quirk up incrementally into a small smile. "I'm glad you see that," she says, almost too seriously, and like – Zayn can't help it.

It's the worst idea she's had yet.

She leans in to kiss Niall anyway, because Niall's hair is frizzing around her shoulders again from when she took off her cap, and she's all dressed up in work clothes, chinos and her polo and a cute little simple heart pendant on a gold chain with matching earrings and her travel shoes, which are trainers instead of her work ballet flats, and Zayn is still in _pyjamas_ , barefoot, with her jacket slipping down off her shoulders, and the light from the overhead lamp is just catching Niall's hair and gilding it, almost, and just – Zayn is experiencing this massive rush of emotion about Niall, who _came to her house_ to _make sure she's okay_.

It's just a quick little press of lip against lip, nowhere near long or deep enough to taste any of the curry Niall has been eating, and Zayn regrets it almost as soon as it's over.

"Sorry," she says, drawing back, but Niall looks at her with the biggest, most luminous grin Zayn has ever seen on her face.

"Don't be," she breathes, rocking forward quickly to catch Zayn's mouth in another kiss, longer this time but no deeper than before.

That is, not until Zayn lets her lips fall open, slightly, because it's pretty much second nature for her when it comes to kissing by now, and Niall gasps, her hand moving around to Zayn's back. She uses that leverage to push herself closer to Zayn, chest pressing in, as Zayn tilts her head so that the angle of the kiss feels more natural.

Kissing Niall is like – well. Spicy, from the food, and fun, because she can _feel_ Niall smiling into it, and sexy as hell what with the way that Niall is leaning further and further in until, suddenly, Zayn loses balance and falls backward to the floor, dragging Niall with her so that she's half-splayed out across Zayn's front. 

Niall breaks away to laugh, but before Zayn can push herself up or say anything about how this is probably a bad idea, they should stop now – though, admittedly, it's looking more and more like a good idea now that she knows that kissing Niall Horan is just as good as fantasizing about kissing Niall Horan, which has not always been Zayn's kissing experience – Niall works one of her hands free so that she can sweep her own hair back and leans in again, kissing Zayn openmouthed in a hot slide of lips and then, finally, tongue. 

"I've been thinking about doing that for a while now," Niall admits, when they come up for air. She rolls over onto her back, at Zayn's side. Her hair is properly debauched and her lips are kiss-swollen, darker than usual. Her cheeks are flushed.

"Yeah?" Zayn says, distracted by the way that Niall's lips look now that they've been kissed by _her_. "Me too."

"Good, so do it again," Niall says, and Zayn leans up, propping herself up on one elbow, and manoeuvres until her face is hovering over Niall's. Gently, slowly, she kisses Niall.

Since she's now fully committed to this probably terrible (terribly _great_ ) idea, she puts everything she's got into the kiss, working at Niall's lips with her own until they part in just the perfect way, at which point she shifts her angle so that she can lick into Niall's mouth, quick but deliberate. Niall gasps and turns in to Zayn, an arm going around her waist, splaying warm and sure, two fingers slipping, almost automatically, along the skin between Zayn's ratty tank top and her pyjama bottoms. 

The thing is, Zayn is still totally overwhelmed by the way that Niall _came to her house_ and got her to talk about Liam, and even though Zayn still isn't convinced that she blames herself for anything that happened, talking about it all did admittedly feel really good. Relieving. 

Which is probably why, midway into the kind of kiss that Zayn knows makes all the girls go weak at the knees – she's got references – Zayn pulls away and, thinking wildly, dizzily, _In for a penny, in for a pound_ , blurts, "You've been so nice to me, I want to do something nice for you."

And then she's struck by uncertainty, because while Zayn knows and accepts that she's so much better at connecting with people through sleeping with them than she is at connecting with people by talking to them, she also knows and accepts that most people don't share, or even agree with, her methods. She isn't sure where Niall falls on the spectrum at all.

Niall, bless her, understands exactly what Zayn is getting at and doesn't seem terribly offended about it, either. "You mean," she says, breathlessly, still managing to quirk an eyebrow at Zayn. "Sex?"

"If that's okay," Zayn says, still uncertain, because, after all, they _are_ coworkers and this is probably inappropriate on more levels than one.

"Fuck," Niall says, rolling back in towards Zayn and kissing her bruisingly hard, hand tightening on Zayn's waist. "Yeah, obviously."

"Bedroom," Zayn says, because she's still got the presence of mind to remember that she has one and a half housemates who are both likely to pop home in the middle of the day to check up on her when she's having a bed-ridden day, and she reluctantly hauls herself up, extending a hand to help Niall up along with her. 

She even thinks to close the bedroom door behind her.

Niall pulls her shirt up and over her head as she walks to the bed, which Zayn really respects in a woman. "I like you," she says, smoothly, well aware that she's staring quite obviously at the curve of Niall's back just above her hips.

"Cheers," Niall says, turning around with a grin, undoing her belt and the flies on her trousers as she talks. And, well, now Zayn is staring at her chest, which is a very nice thing to look at. "I like you too, even though you're wearing clothes."

"Oh," Zayn says. "Right." And she shrugs her jacket off and takes off her tank top, dropping it to the floor, undoing the laces on her pyjama bottoms as she moves in closer to Niall.

"No-nonsense," Niall says, giving Zayn a good look up and down her body. "I like it."

"Yeah," Zayn says, and she crowds into Niall's personal space and takes her face in her hands gently and kisses her hard, backing Niall up until her legs bump the bed and she has to reach behind herself to ease herself down. "I'm a fan of getting down to business."

"To defeat the Huns?" Niall asks, laughing at her own joke, totally nowhere near embarrassed. Zayn's stomach does that twisty clench thing again that she's getting so used to feeling around Niall, so she distracts herself from that and the following overwhelming feeling of affection sweeping over her by pressing in and kissing Niall again, smooth and slick, running a hand up and down the soft bare skin of Niall's side as she does so.

Niall's hands catch on the waistband of Zayn's pyjama bottoms, and then she pushes her fingers just under the edge until they're digging, hot and rough, just above Zayn's bum. Zayn inhales sharply, sucking Niall's lower lip into her mouth and nibbling on it, gasping into the kiss as Niall pushes one of her legs up between Zayn's until it's pressed square against Zayn's crotch.

"You've got great focus," Zayn tells Niall, and with a great heave, rolls them over so that Niall is on top of her and Zayn has better access to the hook on Niall's bra.

She unlatches it and pushes at the straps, so Niall sits up and takes it off, pushing her trousers off the rest of the way. Niall is wearing faded cotton pants, so old that the elastic is fraying on her hip. For some reason, Zayn finds this so inexplicably charming that she has to lift her hips up and work her own bottoms down and bite her tongue hard to keep from looking too overly fond of the girl.

When Niall moves back in, Zayn makes as if to kiss her, but Niall pushes her hair back and sucks a bite right at the junction of Zayn's neck and her collarbone instead, working it over with her teeth and her tongue until Zayn is biting her lip hard to keep from moaning. Desperately, she fumbles her mouth down until she's cupping one of Niall's breasts in her hand, squeezing lightly for a moment before adjusting her grip so that she can roll Niall's nipple between her fingers. 

"Are we really doing this?" she asks, when Niall finally lifts her head and gives her a slow burn of a smile. 

Niall moves a hand deliberately to one of Zayn's tits. "I'm game if you are," she says, so Zayn sits up and smirks.

"I'm going to make you feel so good," she promises, and slips a hand down the front of Niall's pants, feeling through the silky hairs, biting her lip hard at the way that the cotton brushing against her knuckles is already damp. 

When her hand reaches Niall's clit, she smirks and presses down on it with her fingertips. Then, wickedly, she leaves her fingers frozen in place, pressure steady, and kisses her way down Niall's front, over the swell of a breast, funnelling her lips into a little circle and tasting the sweat that's beading on Niall's chest as she works her way lower, occasionally pausing to suck a quickly-fading red mark into Niall's skin or to nibble at the swell of Niall's breasts.

When Niall gasps and her hips twitch forward, seeking friction from Zayn's finger, Zayn smiles to herself and quietly tells Niall to lie down.

And then she starts working Niall's pants down around her thighs. "Kick those off," she whispers and then, wickedly, she blows a raspberry right over Niall's belly button.

Niall laughs like she can't help it as she follows Zayn's instruction, her kick flinging her pants somewhere across the room. She pushes herself up on her elbows and stares down at Zayn as Zayn presses her legs open wider and bends her head down and pushes the flat of her tongue against Niall's clit, hard.

"Fuck," Niall says, her hips pushing up towards Zayn's mouth, so Zayn readjusts her grip on Niall's thighs and, pressing her own legs together because her clit is throbbing from just this first taste – eating girls out gets Zayn going like nothing else – funnels her tongue into a point and flicks it over Niall's clit steadily and repeatedly until Niall's thighs are trembling under her hands and she's letting loose a litany of swears.

Zayn presses a soft kiss to Niall's clit then – too soft, and she knows it; it's one of her favourite tricks – and lifts her head up, smiling slightly when Niall says, " _Zayn_ " desperately, hips canting up against the air.

"I got you, babe," Zayn says, and kisses Niall's clit once more, featherlight, and then funnels her lips into a circle again and blows a stream of cool air across Niall's slick folds.

Niall shudders this sexy full-body shudder, so Zayn takes pity on her and quickly, abruptly, fucks her tongue into Niall, just _tasting_ her as she pushes in as far as it will go, fast and loose, until she can't tell whether the moisture collecting on her chin is from Niall's cunt or her own mouth.

"Fuck, Zayn, _please_ ," Niall says, so Zayn licks her way back up to Niall's clit and wraps her lips around it, humming slightly as she lets go of one of Niall's thighs and works her hand up until she can press two fingers inside of Niall, thrusting them in hard and scissoring them apart slightly as she hums around Niall's clit, flicking it hard with the tip of her tongue all the while.

Niall shouts and her thighs clench and relax, and then Zayn can feel the way that she lets her head flop back to the bed, so with one last long, slow lick, one final taste, she sits up and crawls up Niall's body, stretching out next to her.

By this point, Zayn is so turned on she basically can't see straight, but what she does see – Niall, flushed from cheeks all the way down her chest in these adorable ruddy patches, nipples still hard – is gorgeous. And yeah, Niall's tits are small – Zayn's aren't massive either, though, to be fair – but they're beautiful and deserve more attention. So maybe Zayn leans over and kisses each one once. Maybe.

Niall grins at her, just breathing for a moment before rolling on her side and kissing Zayn hard, thrusting her tongue in Zayn's mouth and stroking her hand deliberately over Zayn's breasts and down her stomach, pushing it under the front of Zayn's underpants and crooking her fingers up through Zayn's slick folds until they catch just under her clit and Zayn gasps.

Practically smirking, Niall rubs her fingers in tiny little circles, just this side of too slow. "Niall," Zayn says, warningly, pushing her hips up into Niall's touch, because she's so close from the noises Niall made when she was going down on her, she just needs a little bit more friction.

She presses her thighs together because that always helps her along and wraps a hand around Niall's neck, dragging her in for a kiss that's more breathing openmouthed against Niall's lips than anything, because Zayn is not really able to focus on anything but the pleasure shooting through her at the way that Niall's fingers are slipping against her clit, hard and sure.

And then Niall twists her hand in a new way and Zayn is gone, screwing her eyes shut as she comes _hard_ with a deep, guttural groan.

When she finally opens her eyes, Niall is licking her fingers, which is just – well. Zayn is the kind of girl who gets overstimulated easily and has trouble coming more than once without at least a little break, but that sight poses a pretty compelling case to go for another round.

Instead, she drags herself out of bed and cracks open her window so she can smoke out of it without putting clothes back on or Louis getting mad that she stunk up the house.

Niall walks up behind her and wraps an arm around Zayn's middle. "Can I borrow that?" she asks, so Zayn takes a drag and passes the cigarette to her. Niall looks at it for a long moment before inhaling, then hands it back.

"Was that a mistake?" Zayn asks, finally, once the cigarette's almost done. Her mind is still reeling from her orgasm, at least a little bit. "I feel like it may have been a mistake."

"Only if we let it be," Niall says. Zayn feels Niall's shrug more than she sees it. "It doesn’t have to be a thing at all."

She grinds the butt of her cigarette out in dirt of a potted fern on her windowsill and takes her air freshener out from the shelf below it, spraying around and slouching back to the bed. She doesn’t want to think about this right now, about how Niall is her coworker who she just slept with, even though she swore that would never happen again. "I fancy a nap," is all she says, throwing herself onto the bed, and Niall shrugs again.

If they cuddle a little, Zayn will never tell.

+++

When Zayn wakes up, Niall is passed out next to her, face-down, her head tilted towards Zayn. Her mouth is half-open and she's snoring lightly, her arm thrown across Zayn's stomach.

Zayn's got the covers shoved down to her waist. Her pillow has somehow got shoved away, so it's only half under her head.

It takes her a moment to register the fact that she was woken up by the way that her door is opening.

"Zayn?"

It's Louis. "Yeah?" she asks, quietly.

"I saw the curry just laid out on the carpet downstairs," he says, pushing the door wider open. "I just wanted to check and see – oh."

Right. She's shirtless and her tits are just hanging out. Also, her coworker is asleep next to her in her bed, and even though the sheets are mostly covering Niall, it's pretty obvious that Niall is also naked, what with the way that her clothes are strewn all over Zayn's floor.

She considers telling Louis that it's not what it looks like, but like, it's precisely what it looks like. "Hi," she says, instead.

He just raises his eyebrows at her. "You okay?" he whispers, glancing at her breasts for a moment – good, Zayn would be worried if he didn't – before looking back up at her face.

"Getting there," she says, and he smiles at her and backs out.

Zayn rolls over and falls back asleep.

When she wakes up again, Niall is still curled up, breathing slow and steady, hardly moving, but Zayn's stomach is grumbling again, so she slips out of bed and pulls on some jogging bottoms and tiptoes out for some toast.

Louis is sat in the kitchen, drinking his bedtime mug of tea. When he sees her, he just raises his eyebrows at her.

"Oh, shut up," Zayn says, looking around. "Do we have bread?"

"Did you buy any?" Louis asks, and Zayn sighs. 

"What do we have, then?"

"Here," Louis says, and tosses a crumbly biscuit in her direction. Somehow, she actually manages to catch it. Nibbling, she sits down in the chair across from him.

He looks at her searchingly for a long moment. "Are you going to regret this?"

"Probably," she says. "When I start to think about it."

"Was it good?" he asks.

"Love you," Zayn says, seriously, because he's just like – such a brother, and she really does appreciate the way that he keeps checking in with her. "Yeah, it was really fucking good."

"Finally," he teases. "You were getting a bit testy."

"Oh, shove it," she says, pushing at his arm. "Selena coming over tonight?"

"She's already in bed," he says, tilting his mug at her. "It's pretty late, but I expect you've been too asleep to notice. I'm about to go join her. Niall spending the night?"

"Yeah, I reckon so," Zayn says. "She's still asleep and I'm not going to like, just kick her out."

"I should tell the lads at work about my house full of women," Louis says. "They'd be ever so jealous – hey!"

His tea actually sloshes from the force of Zayn's latest shove, so she smiles at him sweetly. "Cheers for the biscuit," she says, after she finishes it, giving him a crumby kiss on his cheek. "I'm going back to bed."

"Love you," he says, quietly, and she smiles at him on her way out of the room.

+++

When Zayn wakes up properly, Niall is sat on the edge of the bed, towelling her hair off. "I used your shower," she says, when she notices Zayn sitting up. "Louis said it was okay."

"Yeah," Zayn says, blinking back sleep. "It is. Do you need a change of clothes?"

"Eh," says Niall, shaking her head. She smiles, half-shy, half wicked. "I can just wear what I did yesterday, can't I? It's not like it was on me for very long."

"Fair enough," says Zayn. She sits up, the blankets falling down from her chest. She's still wearing the jogging bottoms she slipped on last night, which maybe accounts for the flash of what looks like disappointment in Niall's eyes. Zayn smirks inwardly, then says, "I did not expect to sleep that much."

"You probably needed it," Niall says, shrugging. "I know I did. All those late nights this past week."

"I suppose." Zayn moves to the edge of the bed, swinging her legs over. She twists, cracking her back. "Think I'm going to shower. We might have food downstairs, I dunno. Don't think Louis or I have gone shopping in over a week."

"Selena said that she was going out to get some breakfast," Niall says. She hesitates for a moment, then leans in to kiss Zayn's cheek. "Should be back by the time you're done with your shower."

"I take forever," Zayn says, almost like a warning.

"Then you should go and start now," Niall says, patting Zayn's bum cheekily when Zayn hauls herself up to go.

Zayn takes her time in the shower, because it's always where she thinks best, trying to work through how she feels about sleeping with Niall now that her head is less of a muddle of frustration and panic and stress. She still hasn't come up with any answers by the time she's done rinsing her hair out at the end, so she stands in front of the mirror with her hair-dryer even longer, just kind of staring at herself. Mostly, at the blooming love-bite just above where the neckline of most of her shirts fall.

It was obviously a mistake, the sex, because there's no way that Zayn will even consider entering into a relationship with a coworker – that's just a mess waiting to happen – and if they just start fucking in general, well. It will still get messy, because they're working on a game together and Zayn is pretty well convinced that it's impossible not to bring bedroom politics into a working relationship in some form or fashion, eventually. She just really doesn't want to jeopardize the game. 

But then there's the way that the sex was just plain good. It's not like Zayn's had a significant drought lately, but she hasn't exactly pulled since Liam's accident, and she'd been more or less avoiding the club scene for a good few months before that and she hasn't had a proper relationship in years, either, and it was just really nice to come from someone else's fingers for once, with kisses to add another dimension to the experience, instead of breaking out her trusty vibrator again.

And Niall is _hot_ and nice and so, so positive, and she keeps making Zayn's stomach do queasy little flip-flops, so. Zayn is probably in trouble, there.

She finally has to leave the bathroom or run the risk of damaging her hair from excessive drying, so she pulls on leggings and a button-down shirt that falls to mid-thigh and goes down to breakfast, no less muddled than she was when she woke up.

Selena stares pointedly at the mark on Zayn's neck and raises her eyebrows at her, when Zayn enters the kitchen, so Zayn flips her two fingers and goes to make some tea. Somehow, Selena has managed to wrangle up the stuff for a proper fry-up, but it's Niall at the stove, flipping the bacon and cracking the eggs. 

Louis leans in to Zayn. "I feel so useless," he announces. "In the face of these domestic goddesses."

"Shut up," Selena calls, from where she's sticking bread into the toaster. "Someone's got to make sure that you don't starve."

"Seriously, Lou," Zayn adds, in a pseudo-undertone that she knows is just loud enough for everyone in the kitchen to hear. "I meant what I said about marrying Selena if you don't get around to it quick enough."

Selena laughs. "Maybe if you have a nice enough strap-on," she says. "I like dick too much to give it up entirely."

"I dunno," Niall pipes up. Throughout the exchange so far, she's been watching everything with that almost lazy, half-lidded gaze thing she keeps doing, but now she opens her eyes wide, faux-innocent. "Zayn's pretty good with her tongue. You don't really need the toys."

Utter silence. Zayn just sort of stares at Niall, mouth dropped open, and Selena's eyes go wide. Then Louis starts laughing, hard, clutching his side. "I like you," he announces, and then turns to Zayn. "I like her, she's funny."

"She's just telling the truth," Zayn manages to finally say, mildly.

"I taught her everything she knows," Louis says, turning back to Niall, and Zayn rolls her eyes, because in actuality, she talked Louis through how to properly go down on a girl all those years ago, right after Perrie. 

She tries to avoid looking at the smiles on everyone's faces, the way that Niall starts shimmying a little to a song that starts playing on the radio they keep playing quietly in the kitchen whenever they're in there, the way that Louis and Selena are smiling at each other so, so brilliantly and privately. She's feeling all warm and comfortable inside, and even more conflicted than before.

+++

The problem is that Zayn _likes_ that kind of easy banter, and the fact that Niall slips into the rhythm that she and Louis and Selena have had for years so easily makes Zayn like her just that little bit more.

If circumstances were different, Zayn would totally want to go for it again, maybe turn sex with Niall into a regular sort of occurrence. That's the thing.

"Think I might see Liam today," she announces, because he'll be good to talk to about this. Not that there's anything to talk about, really. Zayn isn't going to repeat the whole mistake, probably, and even if she wanted to, there's no guarantee that Niall would feel the same way about having sex with her. 

Louis would be good to talk to too, obviously; he knows her better than any other person on this planet. But Liam got to actually witness the whole Geneva disaster firsthand, and he knows what it's like to work with Zayn on games, and – well. She also just really wants to see him again, after telling Niall about everything yesterday.

"Hmmm," Niall says. "Told Harry I'd meet him over there for lunch today, want to go together?"

 _Not really_ , Zayn thinks, because she'd been hoping to have time to think about everything on her way over, but she shrugs and says, "Sure, why not?" instead, because there's really no good way to decline. "Did you want to borrow any clothes or anything since you're not going straight home, then?"

Niall looks down at herself. She's back in the chinos and polo shirt from yesterday. They're a little wrinkly, but not really any worse for the wear. "Nah," she says, shrugging. "Harry's seen me in four-day-old pyjamas, this isn't so bad."

"Fair enough," Zayn says, hiding the ghost of a smile. 

The trip is... astonishingly uneventful. Zayn doesn't know what exactly she expects, but Niall sitting down next to her on the tube, hands folded across her bag on her lap and just kind of leaning back with her eyes closed. She doesn't give Zayn any strange looks or check out her legs or reach out to put her hand on Zayn's leg or _anything_ , apart from brushing her finger against the mark she left at the base of Zayn's throat, briefly, right before they leave Zayn's house. And like, Zayn isn't doing any of that, either – okay, maybe she checks out the curve of Niall's hips when she sits down, and glances over just to see her profile when they're sat down, but still.

It's weird, is what it is.

It's not like Zayn is trying to be conceited or anything. She's just used to people focusing on her, especially after sex. It is what it is. 

But Niall just sits there, and when they switch lines halfway into their journey, she stands next to Zayn on the crowded carriage, holding onto a pole, her hand directly under Zayn's, her side pressed warm and firm against Zayn's, talking about what kind of food she and Harry might get for lunch and what kinds of sandwich toppings are her absolute favourite. 

When they get into the hospital, Niall says, "How much do you want to bet that Harry is in Liam's room right now."

It sounds pretty likely, so Zayn shrugs. "This way, then," she says, leading the way to the lifts and on into Liam's room.

Sure enough, Liam's lying in bed, head tilted towards the weak daylight filtering in from his window, Harry sat at his side, both of his hands laced carefully around one of Liam's. 

Zayn hangs back by the door for a moment, instinctively reaching out and resting her hand on Niall's forearm. They watch Liam and Harry for a moment, the way they're just kind of sitting in silence, before Niall shoots a glance at Zayn and Zayn looks right back at her and Niall nods and says, "Hey, Harry, what's a girl got to do to get some food around here?"

Harry jumps and turns and – wow, yeah, Zayn really _has_ been drawing him all this time. Her glance darts over him, quickly, taking in exactly how curly his hair is, where it falls on his forehead, the brilliant shade of his eyes and the curve of his lips and jaw, the way that he fills out his shirt and his trousers, the dark ink on his arm peeking out from under his sleeve – and that's interesting; she'll have to talk tattoos with him if they ever get a chance to sit down. The dream guy she'd been drawing for Liam all along didn't have any tattoos – the scuffy toes of his shoes. He's scrubbed out, so he must have gone off duty before they arrived.

"Hey," he says, and his voice is low and slow. Zayn's glance flickers back behind Harry, though, when she registers movement behind him. Liam is turning his head to look their way. He's smiling faintly. 

"Liam," Zayn says, walking quickly, abruptly over to his side and leaning in to brush a kiss to his cheek. Somehow, seeing him after telling Niall about everything yesterday feels different – a little less frenetic, a little less despondent, but still very, very anxious and concerned. "Hey, babe."

"Hi," he says, voice rough. "Morning. Um." He blinks at her. "This is Harry."

Zayn straightens up, turns to face Harry up close. "Hi," she says, smoothing her hands down the front of her shirt, wiping off any grossness that may have accumulated on the tube, and then extending one to shake it. "Zayn. I'm Niall's, um –"

She freezes. She's Niall's what, exactly?

Niall steps in, though, saving her. "She's the one I told you about," she says, which doesn't clarify anything at all – if anything, it murks it all up even more, the way that her voice jumps and warms over the words, the way that there's a spark of recognition in Harry's eyes while an automatic smile tugs at his lips before he focuses and shifts it into something a little more deliberate. 

"Hi Zayn," Harry says, shaking her hand and then glancing over at Liam briefly before turning to Niall. He looks down over her body and gives her an unreadable look; she raises her eyebrow in response.

Zayn feels hopelessly lost. 

"I've got a good place in mind," Harry says, after glancing back at Zayn and Liam briefly. Zayn watches as Niall curls her arm around Harry's bicep and pulls him out of the room, chattering about how she's in the mood for something well spicy.

Maybe Zayn continues watching for a moment even after they're out of sight. Maybe.

She blushes a little when she recognises what she's doing, and turns back to Liam, who is looking wistfully in the same direction.

"So," Zayn says, trying to force a teasing element into her voice to hide the way that she's honestly feeling a little unsettled by everything, the way that her night is starting to catch up with her now that Niall is out of sight. "Harry, then?"

Liam flushes and rolls his eyes at Zayn, deliberately. "Shut up," he says.

She grins, triumphantly. "Is it nice?" she asks, switching from teasing to a little more soothing. "Seeing him again?"

"Yeah," Liam says, quietly, letting his head fall back straight against the pillow, closing his eyes briefly. Zayn watches the movement of his eyes under his eyelids, the way that the skin there looks slightly bruised even after all this time, the way that his hair is slowly starting to grow over the scars where they had to shave his head to clean up some of his wounds. "I missed him."

"Do you have a... thing?" she asks, tentatively, reaching out and taking his hand in hers. "Like, now."

"Dunno, really," Liam says, opening his eyes again and glancing at her. "Maybe someday. I wouldn't mind it, if I’m honest. The way we parted ways years ago was, um. Not ideal, I suppose, but." He frowns, thinking hard. Zayn waits patiently. He's talking faster than he has in weeks; it's brilliant. She's not going to begrudge him time to reflect. "After my accident and everything, I think I'm more open to revisiting the past. Or something."

"Yeah," Zayn says, voice catching. She clears her throat. "Yeah. I get it."

Liam nods, incrementally. "So," he says. "How's work?"

So Zayn starts telling him about how the game is going, how she's had tunnel vision for days, slamming back energy drinks and barely sleeping; how she started freaking out about how they don't have an ending yet and took off the day before and caught up on sleep. How Niall is being a great help, honestly – it's true – talking her down when she needs it, reassuring her as best she can.

She almost mentions the sex – that was pretty much her whole point in coming here, running it by Liam – but she holds back.

Liam watches her passively, fondly, as she talks. He starts to frown when she talks about how she's still trying to think of a good ending, that Niall is pitching in but it still isn't right, but doesn't speak until she stops to catch her breath and swallow a few times – talking so much has really dried her throat out. "Well," he says, finally, giving her a funny look, complete with a half-smile. "Looks like you've found a proper good replacement for me. Now I won't have to worry about going back to work!"

Zayn feels like she's been drenched in ice-cold water. She gapes at Liam for a moment. A tiny part of her is trying to point out that this is likely Liam joking, but still. It hits so closely to home, and the way that she's been interpreting this whole endeavour all along, ever since Niall was assigned to take Liam's usual role. 

The way that she had Niall splayed out on her bed beneath her tongue and her fingers the night before, despite her personal pact to never sleep with a coworker again.

"Nobody could replace you," she protests, after too long of a pause, tongue thick in her mouth as she speaks. This is absolutely the last thing she wants Liam to think. God, even if he is joking, the fact that he _made_ the joke based off things she's said makes her feel terrible. This is precisely what she was trying to avoid. "Ever. Niall's just a friend. Who is, like, filling in. Temporarily" As she talks, she closes her hands into fists, just out of Liam's line of vision, squeezing until her short fingernails dig into her palms, trying to ignore the litany of thoughts pushing through her head: _Niall is a mistake, Niall was a mistake, befriending Niall was a mistake, fucking Niall was a mistake. Niall, Niall, Niall._

"I never said she wasn't," Liam points out, his eyes suddenly focusing sharper on her, sharper than she's seen in a while. "Zayn—?"

"What?" Zayn asks, stickily, forcing herself to meet Liam's gaze.

"Never mind," he says, eventually, looking away, and he changes the subject to the first thing he's going to eat when he's no longer on a hospital menu.

+++

It isn't until he's half asleep that she mumbles, "I slept with Niall."

Liam's eyebrows lift but he doesn't really wake up, he just squeezes her hand sleepily and says, "Okay." A long pause, and then: "Tell me later."

There's no emotion in his voice, and he's obviously not entirely with it, so Zayn can't really read his reactions properly. She just wants to know how to feel about the whole thing, because on the one hand, the sex was fantastic and the morning after surprisingly nice, but she also doesn't want to get too close to Niall. She's just – 

Zayn is pretty sure that she's a bad idea, is the problem.

When Zayn gets home that night, she crawls up onto the couch next to Louis and rests her head in his lap. His hand hovers for a moment before settling on her hair; while usually she'd growl at someone touching it, this time she just sighs and settles further down.

"All right, babe?" he asks, and she can feel his torso twist as he looks at Selena. The film they've got playing pauses. 

"Why is everything the worst?" she asks him, closing her eyes because they feel like they're burning after her day.

"Post-coital glow wear off?" he asks her, gently.

"I made a terrible mistake," she says, dimly registering that Selena has moved over and now she's taking Zayn's feet up onto her lap, resting a small hand on the curve of Zayn's calf. Not for the first time, Zayn thanks her lucky stars that Selena completely accepts what a package deal she and Louis are. That she and Selena are good friends now, too.

"Did Niall do something?" Louis asks, tensing. "Because if she did –"

"No," Zayn says. "She didn't do anything that she could help."

She can tell that Selena and Louis are exchanging looks over her by the way that Louis's torso is twisting and the shift in the pressure of Selena's hand on her leg, but she can't bring herself to care. She just closes her eyes and feels miserable about the way that she is getting in the way of their relationship and the way that Liam is hospital-bound and the way that she finally ended her dry spell with a frankly amazing, and terribly off-limits, woman. The way she wants more but can't possibly have it because it would be the most ill-advised move she could possibly make. 

So she just whimpers and thinks about how she's trying to quit smoking and decides to buy a fucking carton of Bright Leafs the next time she's out.

+++

Zayn chain-smokes on her way to work the next Monday, both from her house to the tube station and again when she's heading towards the company's building. She stands outside to finish her cigarette and ends up having another two before she pushes her way inside, focusing on building up her walls all over again.

She doesn't really know what Niall's reaction to the whole sex thing will be. Given her own previous experiences with women, she half-expects Niall to act really strangely about the whole thing, wanting more and more, but she also vaguely remembers Niall saying something about being happy about being single when they first met, so.

Regardless, she can't let Niall get close like she's been doing. Zayn is here to finish the game and get it put through and bring Liam back into the company with his place fully secured. She doesn’t have time for uncertainty and doubt regarding a cute friendly coworker she definitely shouldn't have fucked.

So when Niall smiles at her and says hello, she just nods in response, and when Niall leans over Zayn's shoulder to point out a bit of code they should maybe alter for the demo they're presenting to Simon, now just days away, during one of their strategizing meetings, Zayn sits stiff in her desk chair. 

Niall doesn’t try to kiss Zayn or slip her hand up Zayn's leg while they're working or anything, which is a blessing, because Zayn doesn't know how she'd be able to handle it. She doesn't try to talk about Liam, beyond mentioning that lunch with Harry on Saturday had been excellent, and even though she hugs Zayn goodbye and kisses her cheek when they part ways that first night, Zayn can't honestly say that it's any different from the way Niall used to act with her before they had sex.

Zayn isn't so oblivious that she doesn’t recognize that she's paranoid about her own reaction to sleeping with Niall, in multiple senses of the word, but it's an uncomfortable feeling, and a new one, and just begs the need for her to build up as many walls as possible around herself even more.

It all comes to a head two days before they're set to promo their demo for Simon and the board of head designers.

+++

The thing is, Zayn is really good at no-strings-attached sex. She hasn't been in a proper relationship since Perrie, if she's honest.

It's not like she's been damaged by her breakup. Okay, fine, she thought Perrie could have probably been the one, if the whole publicity thing hadn't been a factor, but it's not like she isn't open to love. It's just – she's always got the love and affection she craves from her close friends, and the last time that coincided with her sex life – the last time she fucked someone that she really loved – was when she had her brief flirtation with heterosexuality and tried it all out with Louis a few times.

She's been with a lot of women since then. Some of them have been one-offs. Some of them have been repeat occurrences, spanning weeks or even months but never getting more serious than just having a good time with a gorgeous woman, sometimes a friend, sometimes a stranger. Feelings have never really factored into anything, not on her end. Because working as a video game developer permeates her entire life, she's mostly been thinking of it as gaining experience points; she'll level up into a relationship when the time is right. If at all. 

Geneva had got the wrong idea of things, because it had been difficult to separate sex from workplace relationships, and Zayn had made a pact with herself to never sleep with someone she works with on a regular basis right after a particularly unseemly row in the middle of a development meeting that had a lot more to do with the fact that Zayn had broken things off between them officially than the fact that they had philosophical differences about the way that the colouring of the goblin caverns should look in the game they'd been working on at the time.

It's just – it's really weird to Zayn that Niall hasn't really said anything about the way they slept together since their breakfast with Louis and Selena. She knows she should be glad for it – it's what she wanted, after all, right?

But she's still a little offended, when it comes down to it. Which is totally ridiculous, but there you go.

(It doesn't help, the way that sometimes, when Niall licks her lips in between swallows from her water bottle, Zayn's mind flashes back to the way that Niall licked into her mouth when they were kissing. Or the way that when Niall's fingers flick over the scroll wheel on her mouse, Zayn can't help but think of the way that Niall slipped her fingers over her clit, and the way that when Niall gasps over the way the NPCs look when Zayn finishes inputting the rudimentary code for them, Zayn can't help but think of the way that Niall gasped when she was splayed out underneath Zayn, thighs pressed wide apart, chest heaving and flushed from Zayn's tongue against her clit.)

They're locked in Niall's office, crushed cans from multiple energy drinks littering the desk, crumbs from Niall's lunch swept unceremoniously to the floor. Zayn has dragged one of her cushions in here and is using it to pad Niall's extra chair and she's kicked off her work shoes to free up her toes. She is glaring malevolently at the cheerful Yooyus and Skeiths on the Altador Cup poster on Niall's wall, because they've run through approximately twenty different possible endings and like, it's not that Zayn hates all of the possibilities, but.

She hates all of them.

"It's ridiculous," she tells Niall. "I know that some of these endings could be really great, but I just. Don't like any of them."

"You're going to have to pick one," Niall tells her, matter-of-fact. "You can't just... have a game with no ending."

"I _know_ that," Zayn says, instantly testy. "I'm not an idiot."

"Never said you were."

"I just wish-"

"Look," Niall says, turning to face Zayn head-on and resting a hand on Zayn's knee. "I know, okay? It would be so great if we had Liam's original ending, and I'm sure that would make the game a hundred thousand times better, but we _don't_. So we might as well pick the best option we have now and _go_ with it and change it if we need to in the future."

"I can't accept that," Zayn says, so, so quietly.

"Okay, well," Niall says, lifting her hands up briefly, curling them into tight, white-knuckled fists, before forcibly relaxing them and resting them back down, on her own knees this time. "You need to accept that, at this point in the month, we either settle for an imperfect ending or we have no game whatsoever."

Zayn glares at Niall. "Niall –"

"You know I'm right," Niall says. "It sucks, but like... is it more important to have the gist of the game you and Liam planned out there, or is it more important to have the game perfect and totally unpublished?"

"Wow, I really can't stand you at all," Zayn blurts, voice tight with anger and frustration. "You know that? I absolutely cannot stand to look at you or be around you or –"

Niall looks stricken, her eyes growing wider and brighter as Zayn continues talking, the corners of her mouth tightening into a terrible grimace. Zayn kind of wants to throw up. "Zayn," she says, quietly.

For someone whose modus operandi is usually to internalise everything and speak minimally, Zayn has certainly lost her ability to shut up right now. "You just – you're insidious, you know that? So cheerful and open and calming and fucking _shit_ and you got me to tell you about Liam and sleep with you and now you're using that against me and I just can't _have_ that, Niall, I really can't."

Niall is staring at her, completely frozen. Zayn's chest heaves as she tries to catch her breath, to keep her nerves from sizzling under her skin. "I – " Niall says, and she looks so completely fucking _destroyed_ that all of the rage suddenly shrivels up inside of Zayn and she's left staring emptily back at the way that Niall's lower lip is trembling so slightly, the way that her eyes are bright with maybe-tears, the way that her fingers are digging into her own knees, knuckles white. She shakes her head quickly, and her voice strengthens. Tone drier, flatter, she says, "Tell me how you really feel, Zayn."

Zayn just looks at her for a long moment, the way that Niall's lips are more bitten and chapped now than they were on Friday, the way that her shirt is rumpled and one of her socks is slouching down around her ankle and the way that there's an ink stain on her left thigh, like maybe a pen broke in her pocket. Desperation is welling up in her, her stomach curdling with how out of control and sad and upset and frantic she feels as she stares at the way that Niall's mascara has been rubbing off under her eyes, smudging into dark brown lines.

And then she lurches forward, taking Niall's face between her hands and kissing her hard, tilting her head for better access and twisting her fingers in Niall's hair, going in to deepen the kiss until, suddenly, Niall's hands come up to her shoulders and she pushes Zayn back away from her.

Niall still looks stricken, blinking at Zayn, mouth wet and pink and gaping, cheeks flushed bright red. And then her eyebrows furrow into a frown, and the desperation welling up into Zayn hits a breaking point.

She feels like the absolute lowest of low. "I'm sorry," she says, pushing herself up out of her chair and groping around on the desk for her laptop and the physical portfolio of sketches she'd brought with her. "I'm sorry."

And then she's running out of the room, leaving her heels sitting on the floor under her chair, pillow sliding off the seat in her wake. She stops in her office only long enough to shove her laptop into her backpack and grab her travelling shoes and her pack of cigarettes and then she's out on the street in the driving rain.

She gets on the tube and goes halfway to Liam's hospital before she decides she can't face him like this, and turns right around and goes home and curls up in her bed and stares at the ceiling sleeplessly all night.

+++

When they present the game to Simon, they still don't have an ending, because Zayn's life is actually terrible. She hasn't spoken to Niall about anything outside of the specifics of the game since the kiss, completely ignoring the way that Niall just kind of stares at her when they're working silently, actually playing through what they have of their code so far, testing gameplay, making sure there are no huge glitches.

Niall doesn't bring up the ending and how they don't have one yet, and Zayn doesn't either.

Their meeting with Simon goes terribly. She and Niall show off the game well enough, but every time Niall's arm brushes against her when she's reaching to point to something out – they've projected the code and the very, very rudimentary playable demo onto a large screen on the side of the room – she flinches back. 

Still – "I like it," Simon says, lips pursed, once they've gone over all of the main NPCs and character options, once they've described the way the plot progresses and the way that choosing a sidekick over a superhero makes the game a lot more difficult in a lot of ways, because you don't have as many basic abilities, but ultimately easier to win, because there are so many ways you can connect with other characters and complete missions cooperatively in a way that just isn't an option when you're a superhero. He frowns slightly, scrolls back through the code, sets the gameplay back a little bit – it really is a very rudimentary version – the actual game will take hours to complete and this is just a thirty minute sample, but then again, they only had a month to get this done and Zayn is pretty sure that, apart from the hideously obvious lack of an actual ending to the game, they've got quite a bit done for two people in one month's time. "But what are the ending scenarios specifically?"

Zayn shifts from foot to foot and Niall stares at the ground underneath the projector. Simon sighs. Zayn bites the inside of her cheek hard enough to break the skin, because this is it. This is when Simon will put them on another project, and the game she and Liam have been pushing for for _years_ will be put on the backburner for even longer.

As her mouth fills with the bitter coppery taste from the blood she's drawn with her bite, Simon says, "One week."

Zayn looks over at him so fast that her neck hurts. "What?" she asks, voice totally hoarse. 

"I like this game a lot," he says, folding his hands in front of him. "It needs an ending. Have one for me in a week and I'll put it through."

Zayn blinks at him, and then Niall is whooping and moving in and pulling Zayn into a tight hug, which is – startling, really, and Zayn's entire side fires up at the feeling of Niall's body pressed against hers, but she's so dizzy from this news that she just hugs Niall back and tries not to think about the implications of anything beyond the fact that _maybe this game will happen after all_.

+++

"I think," Niall says, when they're out of the conference room, standing just outside Zayn's office door, "that we should take the day off."

Zayn blinks at her, trying to ignore the way that, now that the buzz of Simon's reaction has started to wear down into panic over needing to come up with the plan for the perfect ending in one week, she can see how Niall is holding herself, angling slightly away from Zayn, waist held back deliberately. She feels so disgusted with herself. "What?"

"Our brains need a rest," Niall says. "If we just... go home, for the night at least – but I think that stepping away for the whole day would be better – then maybe when we get back to this, we'll be coming back to it with, you know, fresh eyes."

Zayn doesn't like the plan – she wants to keep at the game until it's totally in the bag – but she supposes Niall has a point, and in any case, she likes the way that Niall seems tense, her expression somehow flatter than Zayn has ever seen it before, even less than she likes Niall's idea.

Maybe some time apart would be better. Zayn will get lost in her own head if she sits quiet for a while, she knows it, but maybe that won't be the worst thing. It's not like she hasn't been lost in her own head for months now. "Okay," she says. Shrugs.

"I just think – " Niall says, and then her eyes widen. "Wait, really?"

"It's, um. Probably for the best," Zayn says, trying to meet Niall's gaze and failing. "I'll, um. Maybe we meet tomorrow? Afternoon? And start over again?"

Niall nods. "Okay," she says. "That's good." And she stands and looks at Zayn for a moment longer before turning to go.

And then Zayn is faced with a wide-open night. She knows herself well enough to know that being on her own isn't the best idea, so she takes out her phone and scrolls through her contacts. 

Liam would be a bad idea, because she'd just end up thinking about the game even more and if she's going to take the night off, she might as well try to actually take the night off. Louis is great, obviously, but she lives with him and she just... maybe a change of scenery would be a good way to get her head on straight. It's not that she _wants_ to be constantly mired in self-loathing and doubt. She really fucking enjoyed the morning after she slept with Niall, those brief few hours where everything seemed light and easy, before the world came crashing back down on her. 

Maybe she just needs to get out of her rut.

Her thumb hovers over Perrie's number. She knows that Little Mix finished up their latest tour a week or so ago – Perrie had texted her to let her know that she was going back to South Shields for a quick break but that she'd be in London soon to record and they should rendezvous and catch up.

After a moment of fierce internal debate – she's been over their relationship for a while, they're good mates now, but being with Perrie always ends up with Zayn thinking more than she necessarily wants to – she hits dial.

"Hi babe," Perrie says, when she picks up. "What's up?"

"You back in London?" Zayn asks. "I kind of want to get out of my house tonight."

"Yeah," Perrie says. "Me and Jesy were going to have a girl's night in but you can totally join us if you want. Come right over."

"Cheers, I'll be there soon," Zayn says, and makes a kissy noise into the phone before hanging up. 

She stops at the off-license two streets over from work and picks out a nice bottle of wine and then catches a taxi to the massive house that Perrie and Leigh-Anne share. They're about halfway there when texts start coming in:

_Zaynnnnnnn i know niall isnt replacingggg me_

_whyyyy would u think somethin lke that i understand_

_howd the game pitch go_

She bites her lip and sends, _we have another week to finalise :) x_.

_Good do u like niall I thout after gen u werent gonna do coworkerssss anymore_

This is exactly what Zayn doesn't want to think about. Why did she even tell Liam about that? _we'll talk about it later yeah xx_ she sends, and turns her phone off.

The cab pulls around back of Perrie's house, so she sneaks around to the side door and knocks, and then she's back into Perrie's glittering world.

+++

Perrie is wearing a wreath of real daffodils on her head, probably purchased from some kind of fancy florist as they're definitely out of season, because of course she is. Despite the chill of the evening setting in, she's got a sundress on over her tracksuit bottoms. Her hair is lightly blue now, and her smile makes something twist in Zayn's chest still. Nothing like a crush, not anymore, just the ghosts of what could have been.

Zayn kisses her hello – they can do that now – and hugs her tight, nodding at Jesy, who is stood right behind Perrie's shoulder in these wicked parachute pants and a tank top.

"I feel massively overdressed," Zayn says, because she's still in her business meeting formal, tight tight skirt and blazer over a fancy shirt, towering stilettos on her feet because she didn't bother switching to her sandals in the cab. 

"I'll give you some pyjamas," Perrie promises, dragging Zayn into her kitchen. "How the hell have you been?"

"Oh, you know," Zayn says. "Same old. Making videogames. Avoiding emotions. Trying to work out why Louis and Sel aren't married yet. Definitely not doing a sold-out critically acclaimed world tour like some people I could name."

Jesy laughs loudly and rolls her eyes at Zayn. "You're never as much of a hot mess as you make yourself out to be," she says, borderline accusingly, but her words are softened by a smile. "I'm going to go ring Taylor, I'll leave you two to catch up for a bit."

"Let's get you out of those clothes," Perrie says, and then she has to lean against the countertop and laugh, which Zayn appreciates. It's nice that the fact that she used to know Perrie's body better even than her own doesn't have to be a Thing between them.

"How wickedly inappropriate," she murmurs, but she follows Perrie upstairs to her bedroom just the same.

"I'm not going to leave while you change," Perrie announces, after she pushes tracksuit bottoms and a t-shirt into Zayn's arms and sits down on her bed. "It's been that long since I've seen someone as gorgeous as you mostly naked, what with touring and all."

"You sure know how to romance a girl," Zayn says. She's feeling better already. She even puts on a bit of a joking show for Perrie, shrugging her blazer off slowly and twirling it around on her hand before throwing it in Perrie's direction. 

When she's all changed, she hops up onto Perrie's bed with her and curls up at her side. "Everything's shit," she tells her. They used to have a largely-unspoken pact to not sugarcoat anything for each other, back when they were still trying to make their relationship work, back when Zayn was still able to work on dealing with being papped everywhere she went. They still stick to it, even though the circumstances have obviously changed.

Perrie clucks her tongue at Zayn. "Oh, sweetie," she says. "I was so sorry to hear about Liam."

"Yeah," Zayn says. "Simon put me through to work on the game me and him had going on and assigned a new employee to the project and it's been going okay but I accidentally slept with her and we still don't have an ending because everything is shit and we have a week to come up with one or the game is getting tabled."

"Wow," Perrie says. "Your life has been eventful."

"Yeah, thanks," Zayn says, dryly, but Perrie's fingers have found their way into Zayn's excessive pompadour and she's loosening it from the hold of all of Zayn's product and hair grips and elastic bands. Zayn feels tension draining out almost immediately as her hair settles down from the tight style she'd had it in for the meeting, as Perrie runs her fingers along her scalp. "I dunno, Pez. Everything is just so overwhelming."

"Yeah," Perrie says. She's silent for a little while. "I've had a bit of a thing going on with Rita Ora for a few months, did you know? Ever since our collaboration."

" _No_ ," Zayn says, pushing herself up and staring at Perrie. "Really? Shit."

"Yeah," Perrie says. "I don't think it's going anywhere, if I’m honest. It's hard to maintain a relationship on the road, even if we did have a lot of days off in the same towns when we were both touring South America and the States. I think it was mostly just convenience."

"Did you want it to be more?" Zayn asks.

"Kind of?" Perrie says. She sighs. "I kind of want to settle down a little bit, but I don't know if she's the one for that."

Zayn knows, because they've discussed it, that Perrie more or less swore off proper relationships after they broke it off. She wanted to focus on her work, on being part of Little Mix. They've neither of them had official girlfriends since they split – Perrie has dated here and there, but it's never been for longer than a few months. They've also discussed getting back together on multiple occasions, but that wouldn't solve anything. They love each other, yeah, and Perrie could have been the one, but Zayn will never be able to handle being in the public eye and Perrie can't go back into anonymity. "I'm sorry," she says, taking one of Perrie's hands in hers and squeezing.

"Yeah," Perrie says. She sighs a little, then reaches up to adjust her daffodil circlet, laughing a little self-consciously. "We're a right mess, aren't we?"

Later that night, after the three of them have split the bottle of wine Zayn brought and moved onto drinks that Jesy mixes in the kitchen with a heavy hand, after Perrie and Jesy have regaled Zayn with tales of touring, of the little girls who try to hand them flowers and homemade cards and the bigger girls, just coming to terms with their sexuality, asking Perrie if she has any advice, which is just _so cool_ , Perrie says, "So tell me about this coworker of yours."

"Niall?" Zayn asks. "She's new. She was put onto the project. She's little and blonde and loud and spends a lot of time staring at nothing with her eyes half-closed when people are talking, which – " Zayn is hit by a sudden burst of clarity. "I think that's because she's, like, observing and assimilating or whatever, you know, taking things in, not because she's bored." She sighs. "She's got clever fingers."

Jesy laughs, incredulously. "Clever... fingers?"

"Yeah," Zayn says, sighing. "She gets on really well with Louis and Selena, too, and because the universe is actually ridiculous she's best friends with the guy who Liam used to like, be in love with when he was a kid or something."

"She sounds lovely," Perrie says, seriously, and Zayn has to smile.

"Yeah," she says. "She's also in love with you guys. Has a bit of a thing for Leigh, apparently."

"I like her," Jesy declares, because it's a well-established fact that Jesy thinks that everyone should have a bit of a thing for Leigh.

"Even knew who I was," Zayn says, laughing a little. "Didn't realise it was me who she knew of, but she definitely knew of me."

"You should bring her around," Perrie says, clapping her hands. "Once you've managed to properly romance her."

"I don't know," says Zayn. She grows suddenly serious. "Like, I don't think I’m going to like, date her or whatever."

"You've been talking about her all night," Jesy says. "Why in the world wouldn’t you? Don't give me any 'I don't like her that much' bullshit, babe, denial isn't a good look on you."

"Apart from the fact that she's my coworker and that's automatically a terrible idea?" Zayn says, sighing a little at Jesy's claim, because that's the problem, isn't it? Now that she's tipsy and with the girls who have known for a decade how she looks when she's properly into someone, she really can't tell herself that she doesn't have a bit of a thing for Niall, that that's part of the reason she's been so messed up by how casual Niall is being about the whole sex thing. "I fucked up."

"What did you do?" Perrie asks, tilting her head down onto Zayn's shoulder.

So Zayn tells them about yelling at Niall, the way that Niall's face fell, the way that she kissed her and now Niall can't stand to be around her at all.

"I know you've always had problems with this," Perrie says, eventually. "But an apology does go a long way."

"Hey," Zayn says, because she's not _that_ bad at apologizing, and she also doesn't think that a simple apology will cover the scope of her emotions: regret at kissing Niall like that, the way that she wants to kiss Niall again and again and learn if Niall gets off faster or louder if Zayn uses her tongue in different ways, how Niall would respond to Zayn introducing a vibrator or just fucking her with her fingers. Whether Niall would be into riding Zayn's face.

The way she's pretty sure that Niall might not want any of that at all, because maybe Niall just wanted a one-time fuck with a friend. Not that Zayn would blame her; that's how she's been pretty much living her life for the past eight years. She gets it. It's a simple way of life.

She's not even sure what she wants from Niall, honestly, but the way that she's so much more caught up in the implications of everything kind of indicates to her that she may not just want her standard fare of sex and friendship.

Almost like she can read Zayn's mind, Jesy adds, "It's a starting place, at least," and yeah, Zayn can jive with that. 

She'll try to make it up to Niall somehow.

+++

When she gets to her meeting with Niall the next day, she's a little bit hungover still, and she's wearing one of Perrie's outfits, because she never actually made it home the night before. It doesn't fit perfectly – Perrie is a little shorter than Zayn, and her shirts stretch tighter across Zayn's chest, her trousers hemmed a little too high – but it's better than wearing the same clothes two days in a row. It's only just sinking in to her that she managed to properly get her mind off the game for most of the night the previous night, and she's not quite prepared for this meeting. But maybe that's a good thing.

Before Niall can say anything, Zayn takes the spare seat in Niall's office and moves it a safer distance away, so she can't quite smell Niall's shampoo or see every little line that forms at the corners of her mouth when she quirks her lips. "I've been thinking," she says, taking out her pencil and poising it over a pad of paper, in case she ends up taking brainstorming notes. "Remember that ending that we came up with two weeks ago? The one that I said was too involved and specific?"

"Yeah," Niall says, giving Zayn an unreadably searching look.

"Let's go with that," Zayn says. "I think it's the closest we've come."

"Oh," Niall says, looking startled. "Um. Yeah. I actually had an idea last night, but I've been working on it a little bit and it's not done, so – why don't we go with that for now and if I find a way to make my idea feasible, I'll tell you that?"

"Yeah, okay," Zayn says, and she sits uncomfortably for a long moment.

"You smell different," Niall blurts, looking Zayn over, and oh, right, Zayn used Perrie's shower last night.

"I was at a friend's house last night," she says, awkwardly. "Ended up crashing there, which is why my clothes don't really fit."

"Oh," Niall says. "I hadn't noticed."

"Right," Zayn says. She doodles on her paper for a little while, waiting to see if Niall says anything else. When she looks down, it turns out she's drawn Niall in the style they've picked for the game. She scrawls _hero npc_ under the picture of Niall and scribbles a quick version of herself, writing _villain npc_ under it, because that's how she feels about her life right now. When Niall still hasn't said anything, Zayn looks up at her. 

Niall is leaning back in her seat, just kind of observing Zayn and the strokes of her pencil. When she notices Zayn looking, she pushes herself up straighter. "Right," she says, and she flashes an uncertain smile at Zayn. "So we'll just get to work then, shall we?"

+++

Zayn doesn't particularly love the direction they're taking with the ending of the game – the basic premise is great, but the nuances just aren't there – but it's better than any alternatives they've come up with so far. So she decides to save putting a lot of effort into working on it for when she and Niall are doing one of their scramble sessions, trying to get everything all lined up as quickly as possible, and spends the next morning sorting out full-scale game production into smaller jobs, so that, if Simon puts their game through officially, the tasks are already sorted out and assignable.

She takes a long lunch break and eats the sandwich she buys on a bench at the nearest little park. The days are getting colder, and Zayn is bound to enjoy the remaining vestigial warmth as much as she possibly can, however cloudy it may be. 

Her phone buzzes as she's wiping her fingers clean. _I likkkeee nialllll_ , Liam says.

Zayn frowns, because that was definitely out of left field. She doesn't know if Liam has ever even seen Niall, apart from on their morning after, and she certainly doesn't know why he'd feel compelled to text her about it randomly in the middle of the day.

At least he seems to be returning to normal.

Niall bursts into Zayn's office about thirty minutes after she gets back from lunch, while Zayn is in the middle of finalising directions for designing the game graphics. Zayn can't help but take in the way that Niall's hair is flying back from her face, mussed out of her messy knot like she's been out in the wind, the way that her cheeks are pink and her eyes bright and blue and so, so alive.

"Okay," Niall says, pushing herself up onto Zayn's desk, mindless of the mess, scooting a bunch of Zayn's papers around with her bum. Zayn doesn't protest. It's not like she treats her papers any better. "Don't talk, just listen."

"All right," Zayn says, blinking at her.

"So correct me if I'm wrong," says Niall, leaning forward. "Like shake your head or something, but your thing is that you really want Liam to be involved in the end scenes because he had the idea for how it was all going to go down and it's also just really weird for you that he hasn't been involved in the actual production of this game so far at all, yeah?"

"Yeah," Zayn says. "That's it exactly."

"Right, so," Niall says. "Harry and I have come up with a plan with Liam, so that we'll have the best possible ending for this game ever."

"I'm listening," Zayn says. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. Allows herself to feel cautiously optimistic. "What is it?"

"Right, so," Niall says. "Haz is going to sneak us into Liam's room after hours tonight and we can bring a laptop with the brief game mock-up and show it to Liam and he can help us work out the ending." She looks at Zayn, a little anxiously. "It's not perfect and we may not come up with anything, but I thought –"

"It's perfect," Zayn says, her mind reeling. She's asked Liam if he remembers the ending; she's complained that he can't be involved in the process, but somehow she'd never thought of bringing the game to him and having him weigh in. "God, Niall, it's absolutely perfect."

"Oh, good," Niall says, smiling, her body relaxing into a slump, and suddenly, the tension between them dissipates just a little bit. "His memory hasn't come back yet, not properly, but Haz has been running some exercises with him since I texted them after our meeting with Simon. And like, it hasn't been very long, obviously, but hopefully he'll come up with some good input even if it isn't his original ending."

"You're too good," Zayn says, reverently. She doesn't want to think about the possibility that they may come up blank, so she tries to put that right out of her mind. 

She also doesn't know how to go about apologizing, so she tries to put worrying about that right out of her mind, too.

+++

Liam isn't sharing a room at the hospital, not right now, so it's easy enough for Harry to close the door behind them as Zayn plugs her laptop in and scoots Liam's wheelchair closer next to her, so he can see the screen better.

Niall pulls up a seat on Liam's other side. Zayn tries not to read into the way that Niall isn't sat right next to her, tells herself it's so they can both point things out to Liam equally well, and mostly manages to suppress that thought process, instead focusing on pulling up the code for the game in one window, the graphics she's finished in another, and the twenty-minute playable demo she and Niall had hashed out for their presentation.

Harry pulls a stool around behind Liam, rests a hand absently on his shoulder, and says, "Right, so obviously I want you all to get this sorted, but Liam does have to go to sleep, preferably sooner rather than later, so keep that in mind. Doctor's orders."

"You aren't a doctor yet," Niall says, shaking her hair over her shoulder, but she leans in to the computer just the same and twists her head to look at Liam. "What do you remember of the game?"

"Most of it," Liam says. "I didn't lose _that_ much, and Zayn and I have been working on this for years."

"Brilliant," Niall says, and she tugs the computer closer to her and, fingers flying over the keyboard, brings their demo up. She plays through it for Liam, talking through the entire thing, pointing out particulars of the plot as she goes.

Zayn lets her. She doesn't mind Niall taking point on this – the dialogue has been entirely Niall's work, and she's heavily informed the plot beyond what Zayn and Liam had created when they were working informally on the game – but she does interject a few times, referencing decisions she and Liam had made when this game was in its true infancy, explaining the few deviations she and Niall had decided were appropriate. 

As they work through the game, Zayn gets filled with this intense sense of pride, and of belonging. She's _missed_ working with Liam, and here they are, finishing up the plot together, with the help of Niall, who has, frankly, been instrumental to the process. 

"So what kind of endings have you come up with?" Liam asks, even though he's got to have some idea about most of them, if he's been listening to Zayn at all during her visits. 

"Right," Zayn says, and she starts talking about how they're definitely staying with the idea that the best possible ending comes from people who win while playing collaboratively as a sidekick, but how they can't work out precisely how they want that to go, and they still need specific winning scenarios for people who choose different methods of gameplay. She tells him about all of the possibilities they tossed around and why they probably won't work, and then sits back in her chair.

"Right," Liam says, when they're all done. "Move the laptop to my lap so I can reach it better, yeah?"

The first thing he does is save the code as a new file – "In case I accidentally ruin it, that way your old code will still be saved –" and run through the plot quickly. He makes a few changes as he goes, his fingers slow and fumbling over the keyboard – and Zayn winces inside, because Liam has built his life around video games, and what if he can't fall right back into playing them and writing them as easy as breathing?

But that doesn't bear thinking about right now, because Liam has twisted in his seat as much as his mobility allows, craning his neck a few inches to look at Zayn. "Have you considered," he says, and rattles off a potential scenario.

"We considered that," Niall says. She tucks her hair behind her ears and points at the computer screen. "Not precisely in that way, but see this? When the main villains start to band together for the first time and you meet your first boss? That ending doesn't quite line up."

"Oh," Liam says. "Plot holes. Nope." He frowns, tugging his lower lip into his mouth and chewing on it as he scrolls deeper in. "Okay, so how about if the ending is virtually the same for everyone, but there's a lot of nuance based on your line of play and how easy it ultimately is depends on the route you took?" He pauses, frowning deeper. "What kind of AI are we using?"

"Right," Zayn says, scooting in closer to Liam's wheelchair. She reaches across Liam's lap and pulls open her graphics folder. "Obviously these are just drawings but I sketched out a bit of how these characters will be powered, too, here." She opens the Liam character, smiling slightly at the way his eyes widen and he jerks them toward her face in surprise.

She grins at him. "He's a fit bugger, isn't he?" She points to the stats she wrote out, during one of her and Niall's lunches, talks about the personality they'd given him, the hitpoints, the way that the NPCs level up based on where the player of the game is, both with regards to level and general experience points. 

Liam nods throughout. When Zayn is done, he says, "Great, that's what I was thinking." He sucks his lower lip in again, releases it. He mumbles, "So in that case," and types into the code again. 

By the time Liam starts nodding off in front of Zayn's laptop, two hours later, they have the beginnings of the end worked out. It's not the perfect ending that Zayn had envisioned, but it's a hell of a lot better than anything she and Niall had tossed around before.

Though, granted, maybe part of that is because Liam is finally collaborating on the game like she's been missing all along. It's a little like coming home, dumb as that sounds.

She kisses Liam on his cheek and closes her laptop when his head dips forward for the second time. Harry pushes himself up, wincing as he stretches. "I'll get him into bed," he says, running a fond hand gently over his scalp, careful to avoid the scarring under the slowly-regrowing fuzz right over his left ear.

Niall follows Zayn out of the room. Zayn hesitates for a long moment, cursing the way that she's wrecked everything between the two of them, probably, then thinks _fuck it_ and asks, "Walk with me to the tube?"

+++

"Haven't seen you in a while, babe," Louis says, when Zayn gets home. He walks out of the kitchen and leans against the wall. "How did Simon like the game?"

"Fuck," Zayn says. "I'm sorry, I'm the worst. Did I not even text you?"

"No," Louis says. His mouth twists into a slant. "I assumed you'd tell me if it was big news, one way or the other, though."

"Yeah," says Zayn. "We were given another week to come up with an ending." She pauses. "I spent the night at Pezza's."

Louis quirks his eyebrows. "Yeah?" he says. "Are you doing okay?"

"Yeah, no, it was good," Zayn tells him, silently grateful that he thought to check in with her like that, even though it's been several years since hanging out with Perrie properly fucked her up. "And then Niall and I went to Liam so we could all work on the ending together." She stretches, cracks her back deliciously, and sighs. She's beginning to realise that she's been running on adrenaline for ages, because now that she's coming down from it, she's exhausted, getting a headache that she's pretty sure has nothing to do with her hangover from that morning. "At least we're getting somewhere now."

Louis hesitates for a moment, then moves close enough to nudge Zayn with his shoulder. "Are you, um. Feeling any better, then?"

Zayn sighs. "Is Selena here?" she asks.

"No, she's got a presentation at work tomorrow so she's home finalising it," he says. "Why?"

"Can we have a cuddle in your bed, then?" It's not like Selena would mind, particularly, even if she were there, but sometimes Zayn just really needs to have her best friend to herself.

"Yeah, come on," Louis says. 

Once they're curled up together, Louis's arm across Zayn's side, Zayn's head curled onto Louis's chest, Louis running his hand through Zayn's hair, Zayn's eyes closed against the world, she finally lets herself relax totally.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Louis asks her, gently.

"I'm so mixed up," Zayn tells him. "About everything."

"Yeah, I've got that impression," Louis says, dryly, then he repeats: "Do you want to talk about it?" 

"I don't know where to start."

"Well," Louis says. "I know how you feel about Liam being in hospital, unless that's changed?"

"It hasn't," Zayn says, closing her eyes tighter. She's pretty sure her mascara has been smudging off across her face since she got on the tube after saying goodbye to Niall and she yawned until her eyes watered. This will just make it worse, but whatever. Louis is the only one who will see. "I'm mostly mixed up about Niall, I think."

"Tell me about that?" Louis suggests. "You seemed so cheerful right after you two, um. Spent the night and left that curry on the floor downstairs, but that disappeared quickly."

"I work with her," Zayn says. "You know what a terrible idea that is."

"Yeah, I was a bit surprised that you broke that little personal pact of yours," Louis admits.

"Me too," says Zayn. "There's something about Niall, it seems." She falls silent for a bit, trying to think of the best way to express herself. "I think Perrie helped me see that I have a bit of a thing for her. Niall, that is."

"You do act that way," Louis says. "You don't usually get so mixed up over sex, at least."

"I know." Zayn groans and opens her eyes, twists to look Louis in the eye. "Like obviously I love you more than most people and I was never mixed up over fucking you."

"Granted, you're probably one of the gayest people I know," Louis says. "And I work in the theatre department."

"That's probably offensive," Zayn says, and laughs a little. "I dunno, Lou, it's like, she's obviously my type. Like, you've met her."

"Did you know," Louis says. "I had a talk with her when we went to the bar together."

Zayn bites her lip, glances away. "I may have overheard a bit of that."

Louis glances at her, startled, then laughs. "Well," he says. "That's good, I suppose. Um, anyway, she struck me as the kind of person you could, um."

"Spit it out, Tomlinson," Zayn says, when it hits her that Louis is trying to hedge around a point.

"The kind of girl you could fall in love with," Louis says, all in a rush. He must see the expression Zayn is starting to make, because his hands fly up off Zayn's body and he holds them up, palm out, defensively. "Don't say anything, I know – I didn't think you would, because you haven't been interested in that, lately."

"My emotional needs are fulfilled by my friends," Zayn says, feeling this wild spinning inside her at Louis's words. She'd not allowed herself to think of the possibility of _love_ , probably with good reason, because she can already tell she's on the verge of freaking out again. She grips her hands into fists and relaxes them slowly, three times in a row, focusing on breathing steadily, closes her eyes again, before she adds, "But then again, I suppose Niall is a friend. Despite myself."

Louis rests his hand back on Zayn's waist. "Go on," he says, encouragingly.

"Dunno," Zayn says, shrugging miserably. "I think I've got a bit of a crush, but I absolutely fucked everything up, because even if we weren't coworkers, I was an absolute beast to her."

"You?" Louis says, mock-incredulously. "A tetchy beast? Never!"

Zayn elbows him, hard, smiling to herself when he lets out a soft grunt. She opens her eyes to check, and, yes, he's wincing. Good.

"Anyway," she says. "Perrie and Jesy said that apologizing is a good start, which, yeah, I get that, but I don't know if it's enough."

Louis purses his lips. "Okay," he says. "I want you to tell me absolutely everything that happened, and maybe we can work something out, yeah?"

So Zayn takes a deep breath and spills the entire story, from when Niall was assigned to work on the game and her feelings at the time, through to what she did just before they presented the game, to the night she had, how right it felt, working with both Niall and Liam on the game that night. 

When she's done, finally, Louis is silent for a long moment. "It seems to me that the big question here is, what do you want with Niall?"

"That's the thing," Zayn says, sighing. "I don't know."

"Right," Louis says. He leans down, kisses Zayn on her forehead. "I really think you should tell Niall all of this."

Zayn is quiet for a long time, considering. "Maybe," she says, finally, curling up tighter in Louis's arms, screwing her eyes even tighter shut. "Hey, Louis?"

"Yeah?"

"Love you," she says. "Glad we're still living together ten years later."

Louis laughs. "I'm afraid you're stuck with me," he says, lightly. "Selena's already resigned herself to the fact that no matter whether or not she moves in and we get married, you're going to live in my house every step of the way."

"Mmmm," says Zayn. "When I'm rich off my video game empire we can get a manor in the countryside and all live together in one big happy family, you and me and Sel and your kids."

"And Niall," Louis adds, smirk evident in his voice.

"And Liam," Zayn says. "And I suppose Harry as well, if that turns out to be a proper thing."

"It's a plan," Louis says. He shifts a little. "Gonna sleep in here tonight?"

"If you don't mind," Zayn says. 

After all, she has always slept better when she's next to other people.

+++

Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, they actually get the ending more or less organised, and Zayn actually manages to do her prayers a couple of times in celebration.

Still, the night before they present Simon with the revised ending, she and Niall are still caught up working late. They've stolen the electric kettle from the break room and have made approximately ten million cups of tea – Niall even had to break into her emergency milk supplies – because Zayn has learned her lesson and she's not going to repeat her energy drink mistakes.

Not yet, anyway.

They take their first break when Zayn's eyes start crossing from code. It's an hour till the building officially shuts down, so Niall goes on a food run and Zayn waits for her outside, chain-smoking as many cigarettes as she can till Niall gets back, because once the doors to the building are locked, there's no way she'll be able to go outside for a smoke.

She makes the decision to talk to Niall while they're eating – talk _seriously_ , that is – and her nerves start fizzing up even more, so she takes deeper drags off her cigarettes and waits for Niall to get back with their provisions. 

When they're eating, food spread out across the floor of Zayn's office to leave the papers on her desktop untouched, Zayn says, forced-casually, "The thing is, Niall, I like you."

"That's good?" Niall says, mouth full. A wisp of hair is falling into her eyes and she dashes it out of the way with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of mustard.

Zayn has never been so charmed in her entire life. "I didn't want to," she adds. "I wanted to hate you."

Niall gives her a curious look, part amused, a touch offended. "Because I replaced Liam?"

"Because I thought you would replace Liam," Zayn confirms. She pauses. "I was still worried about that up till the other night, actually."

"You realise I didn't _want_ to replace him," Niall says. "Don't."

"After I got to know you," Zayn says. "It was less about you replacing him so much as me replacing him with you. Does that make sense?"

Niall thinks about it, taking another bite, chewing it, and swallowing before she says, "Yeah."

"Yeah," Zayn says, and she falls silent for a while, eating the sandwich she slapped together with the ingredients Niall'd bought. Eventually, she says, "Anyway, my plan didn't work."

"How did you plan to dislike me, exactly?" Niall asks, quirking her eyebrow. Her tone is deep, rich – with amusement, Zayn fancies. Hopes.

"I dunno, really," Zayn says. "I was just convinced that I wouldn't let myself like you." She allows a smile. "It didn't work?"

"That's good," Niall says. "When did it stop working?"

"About the time that you ordered the entire kitchen at that restaurant," Zayn says. "I was really bad at deliberately disliking you."

"And how do you feel about me now?" Niall asks, raising an eyebrow at Zayn. For all of her bravado, Zayn catches Niall's fingers tightening around her latest mug of tea.

Or maybe that's wishful thinking on Zayn's part. "As I said," she says, shrugging. "I like you."

"You've got a real way with words, Malik."

"What do you want me to tell you?" Zayn asks. "That you're a massively talented programmer with a real knack for plot and dialogue and I would consider you a good friend, seeing as you managed to get me to talk about stuff when I almost never talk about stuff, especially to new people? That you're the best fuck I've had in absolute months?" She registers, distantly, that she's trembling. Probably noticeably.

"I thought that I tricked you into telling me about yourself and then sleeping with you," Niall says. Her face is entirely unreadable.

Zayn winces. "I did say that, didn't I," she says. "I didn't mean it."

"Did I ever tell you that I started out in audio?" Niall asks, munching on some crisps. "For games, that is."

"No," Zayn says, uncertain where this is going.

Niall shrugs. "Well, I did. I thought that's what I'd be working on here, too, since it's a new company and all and I’m just starting off, but I suppose not."

"Is that... what you'd rather be doing?"

Niall shrugs. "Nah. This has been really interesting and enlightening, so."

"Oh," Zayn says. "Well. That's good."

Niall shrugs again, this time with her whole body – shoulders and eyebrows and everything. She wipes her hands off on her trousers and stands up. "Right," she says. "I'm going to troubleshoot our framework for that one scene transition."

+++

Their second break, the doors are locked but they're still in the office, so Zayn looks longingly out of the window, thinking of her cigarettes, while Niall pulls out two bottles of beer that she'd been saving, "Just to quench our thirst, working late like this."

They're about halfway through when Niall says, "I really wanted to impress you at first."

Zayn raises her eyebrows at Niall, swallowing her mouthful and then saying, "You did?"

"Yeah, you were like, fucking gorgeous and super intriguing," Niall tells her. She crosses her legs. They've moved to Niall's office, just for a change of scenery, and Niall is sitting on top of her desk, rolling little scraps of paper into balls and flicking them at her Altador Cup poster. "And then I got to know you and I was just pretty uncertain about you and all your, um." She waves a hand about, indelicately. "Your baggage."

Zayn laughs, despite herself. "I do have a lot of that," she says. She can admit it. It's a thing.

"You do," Niall says, giving her a supremely unimpressed look. She makes a face. "But then I found myself really caring about you a lot, I suppose. Which is why what you said to me cut me so deep, even though I kept telling myself that you probably didn't actually mean it."

"I didn't," Zayn says, seriously. "I've been literally kicking myself over what I said since the second I said it, because it was uncalled for and untrue and really awfully mean of me."

"It was," Niall says, just as seriously. "I don't want to just let it slide. Apart from just being mean, you implied that I tricked you into sleeping with me, and like – that. No. That's unacceptable unless it's entirely true, and we both know it isn't."

"I wanted it," Zayn says. "Honestly, Niall. And you didn't use it against me or whatever it was that I said, either. I was just – well. I don't really have any excuses for it."

Niall smiles, a strange, twisted smile. "You were stressed and panicking and I was telling you something you didn't want to hear," she says.

"You were telling the truth," Zayn says.

"It's good to hear you say that, but it doesn’t really matter," says Niall. "You still didn't want to hear it. I’m not excusing your behaviour, mind you, I'm just saying that I can see where you were coming from."

Zayn nods. "Okay," she says. She's actually feeling calm about this conversation, which is more than she can say about most of her life these days. It's a relief, talking about this, even though she still feels like dirt on a lot of levels. "For what it's worth, I’m really sorry."

"Apology accepted," Niall says, smiling fully at Zayn now.

Something shifts in Zayn's chest. "The worst part," she says. "About what I said. You stopped smiling for a while."

"That's what happens when people are dicks," Niall says, but she's still smiling, so Zayn assues she can carry on.

"The thing is," she tells Niall. "I really like your smile."

Niall's smile widens. "Do you, now?"

She's feeling jittery again, but it's like – it's positive jitters, so there's that, at least. "I do," she says. "I just want to make you smile, like, all the time."

"Cheers," Niall says. "I love you."

"You too," Zayn admits. She means it platonically, but there's a little thrill inside of her at the words and the way they actually role from her tongue. She still remembers what Louis says, and she's hyper-aware of the multiple potential meanings of the word, and it terrifies her, but she's glad that she could be honest despite that. 

She takes a deep breath, because, yes. She likes Niall, like, _romantically_ , and maybe she should tell her, but when she opens her mouth, she chickens out. Now is probably not the best time for it. 

Instead, she says, "I know it doesn't make up for anything, but Perrie wants to meet you."

Niall laughs outright. "Zayn," she says. "You don't have to bring your super famous ex into this," and she gesture between the two of them, "to impress me anymore."

"You could meet Leigh-Anne," Zayn says, winking. "They do live together."

Niall raises her eyebrows. "Well now," she drawls, but she shakes her head. "I mean, that would be absolutely cool, I can't lie, but that's not what I'm in this relationship for."

Zayn almost asks what Niall means by 'this relationship,' because she's actually sixteen, but she bites her tongue. "Noted," she says, and sighs. "We should probably work some more."

"Probably," Niall agrees, so they stow the beers back in Niall's mini-fridge and head back to Zayn's office.

+++

The third break isn't even a proper break. They're both hunched over Zayn's computer, eyes blurring as they try to see if they have any mistakes in their final product, when Zayn gets a text from Louis.

_Miss you Zayn go get em !_

Zayn scrubs her hand across her eyes. She frowns at her phone a moment, because it's obvious she won't be going home tonight, and texts Perrie _Can u bring the clothes I left at ur place 2 my work in the am I need them_.

Perrie's response comes back alarmingly quickly for someone who is supposed to be recording in the mornings. _Yeah ps hows it going with lover girl!!_

"Something wrong?" Niall asks, nudging Zayn with her elbow, and Zayn realises with a start that she's been totally zoning out.

"Yeah, no, I'm fine," she says. "I just – hmm."

"What?"

Zayn shrugs. She's feeling astonishingly calm again. Or, well, buoyed up by the support of her friends and her lack of sleep, and she's less on edge than usual, so she takes a deep breath and says, "Niall, I really _like_ you."

"So you've said," Niall says, looking at her quizzically.

"No, like," Zayn says, knotting her hands into fists and pressing them into her knees. "Like, I really liked kissing you."

"That was fun," Niall agrees, cautiously. 

Zayn takes a deep breath. Now that she's started this conversation, there's really no going back, but she's starting to feel the familiar jangle of uncertainty and borderline panic welling up inside of her again.

She takes another deep breath, because she is not going to let it get the best of her. "Wouldn't mind making a habit of it, if I’m honest," she says, staring straight at her lap.

Niall stays silent, though, so Zayn risks a quick glance over. She's doing her half-lidded observation thing, but her fingers are tapping against Zayn's mouse, quick and arrhythmic.

Zayn nods to herself, decisively, and turns so that she's facing Niall properly. "The most absolutely true thing I can say is, I don't know what I want."

"Okay," Niall says, after the silence between the two of them has stretched enough that Zayn actually registers a prickle of sweat at the small of her back. "What do you want me to say, Zayn?"

"I don't know," Zayn says. "I don't have any expectations about this conversation. I just wanted to let you know, I consider you to be a friend and I'm perfectly satisfied with that, because that's how I _do_." She pauses, because it occurs to her that it's not exactly true, what she said. She'd be fine with being friends, but she already knows that she can't help but flash to the way that Niall looked, hair tousled across Zayn's pillow, spread naked across her bed, in the middle of random conversations. She clears her throat. "But I also wouldn't be opposed to, you know, kissing you. And stuff."

Niall nods. She's let go of the mouse and she's now tugging at the ends of her hair, rolling sections between her fingers absently. "I see," she says.

"The thing is," Zayn says, because now that she's started talking, she's on a roll. "I have this personal pact to never sleep with coworkers. Because I tried it once, with Geneva – you know, she works with Aiden mostly, usually on the post-production end of things? And that turned out absolutely dreadfully and we were not on the same page at all and we still don't work well when we're put onto teams together. So from that perspective, sleeping with you was a mistake." She pauses, smiles a little despite herself. "Also because you're... very distracting, Niall."

Niall grins. "I am, that," she says, and then she sobers a little. "Go on, though."

"I just – I remember you said that you weren't really looking for anything, back when we first met, and I don't even know that I'm looking for a Thing, either, because I don't like things when they aren't easy, and. Yeah. So. That's where I am."

"Wow," Niall says. "That's, um. A lot." She scratches her head, flashes a smile at Zayn. "I'm pretty easy, though, I do have to say that. Being difficult has never been my style."

"I've got that impression," Zayn says, dryly, and Niall chuckles.

"Yeah," she says. "I'm actually incredibly good at being professional, since that seems to be part of your concern. Um. You're right, I'm not looking for anything."

"Oh," Zayn says, and she's about to apologize for everything and turn back to the work at hand when she feels Niall's small hand land on her knee.

"That doesn't mean that I reject stuff that finds me." Niall pulls her hand back, laces her fingers together and sits them on her lap. "I really liked sex with you, for what it's worth. You're really great with your tongue, and I think it could get really fun." She shrugs. "It doesn't have to be a Thing. I don't really let 'difficult' happen around me if I can help it. But I wouldn’t be opposed to continuing with the regular lunches and the sex and the kissing and the going out to bars and stuff, if that's what you want."

"Even with all of my baggage?" Zayn asks. She's partially teasing, but she really does want to know.

Niall shrugs. "You're pretty easy to handle, when it comes down to it," she says. When Zayn splutters in protest, Niall smirks. "We could just... do us, for now. Future Thing optional."

Zayn considers Niall's proposal. "Okay," she says, once she's decided that she really likes the suggestion. "Maybe you should kiss me just so that I can be positive, though."

"Maybe we should finish our presentation," Niall says, but she puts her hands on Zayn's knees again and leans in to kiss her, just a brush of lips against the corner of Zayn's mouth, just the same.

+++

Zayn wakes up disoriented, her side aching, to the blaring ring of her mobile. She pushes herself up, sitting and staring around.

She's on the floor of her office. When she and Niall finally finished with their work, they strewed Zayn's cushions across the floor and curled up, because it was easier to grab a few hours of sleep at the office than travel home and get even less sleep. Now, though, Zayn is remembering why she hasn't slept on any floors since uni.

Her phone is still ringing insistently by the time she's done rubbing the sleep from her eyes, so she gropes around for it.

"Hey," she says. Her eyes catch on Niall finally, the way that Niall is more or less curled into a little ball around one of Zayn's pillows, hair falling in front of her face, drooling slightly.

Zayn is fucking charmed. Less so by the way that Perrie sounds so chipper on the phone when she says, "Hi Zayn! We're ten minutes away from your office."

"What."

"You texted me asking for me to bring you that suit of yours? The one you left at my place?"

"What time is it?"

"Half seven," Perrie says. "We're on our way to the studio but you're sort of on the way."

"Is coffee on the way too?" Zayn asks, hopefully. Usually she just goes for tea all the time – it's part and parcel of living with Louis for ten years – but she's not quite certain tea will cut it after getting, fuck, somewhere between two and a half and three hours of sleep.

There's a flurry of conversation on the other end of the line, fast-paced and directed away from the phone, so Zayn doesn’t bother following along, only checking in again when Perrie's voice gets louder and clearer. "Fifteen minutes, then."

"Cheers," Zayn says, reverently. "You're a god amongst women."

"Don't you forget it," Perrie says. "What should I get you, then?"

"Dunno, just enough for two people," Zayn says, and rings off with an "I'll see you soon." 

It's late enough in the morning that the building will be properly unlocked now, so Niall won't have to wait just inside, holding the door open for Zayn, which means she could probably let her sleep for a little while longer, and when Zayn looks over, Niall looks so peaceful that she almost just gets up and tiptoes out right there.

Instead, she reaches over and jostles Niall's arm. "Wake up, Horan, I've got something to show you."

"Fuck off, it's bedtime," Niall mumbles, and Zayn smiles to herself.

"Trust me," she says. "You're going to want to get up for this."

Zayn checks her phone again once they stumble downstairs, rumpled and morning-breathed, and not entirely awake, just as another text from Perrie comes in. She reads it quickly. "They're almost here," she tells Niall. 

"Who is?" Niall asks, as Zayn pushes the door open, pulling the cigarette she's been craving since the previous night, and a lighter, out from where she stowed them in her shirt pocket.

The van pulls up as she lights up. "Them," she says nodding as Jade opens the door from inside and Perrie stumbles out, carrying a garment bag and a takeaway coffee tray. 

"That’s –" Niall hisses, hand coming up to grip Zayn's arm, hard.

"I know," Zayn says, and then, louder, "Hi Pezza, thanks for the delivery."

"We got you pastries too," Perrie says, turning back toward the van and snapping her fingers inside. She glances at Niall once Jade's handed out a white paper bag with grease marks on the bottom and then, smiling a little wickedly, says, "Leigh-Anne seemed to think it was a good idea."

"Leigh-Anne sure knows the way to a girl's heart," Niall blurts. "Here, let me take those off your hands, lighten your load, maybe –" 

She trails off as Leigh's head swims into view, craning around the side of the door. "Hey Zayn," she says, smiling. "Been a while, thanks for the extra washing."

"You're," Niall says, and turns to Zayn. " _This is Little Mix_ ," she hisses and then frowns, turning back. "And you do _washing_!"

"Didn't think you'd get this flustered," Zayn says, hiding a smile. "It's cute."

Perrie catches her gaze at that, shoots her a look that Zayn interprets as 'did you stop being a twat and get your mess sorted out, then.' Zayn shrugs in return, raising her eyebrows. Perrie grins. "You must be Niall," she says, pushing the garment bag and flat of coffees into Zayn's hand. She steps forward and pulls Niall into a hug. "I've heard _so_ much about you."

"I hate to cut this short, but we should probably head on to the studio," their driver starts, but his words are drowned out by Jesy's laughter. 

"And now you can tell all your friends that Little Mix brought you breakfast on your big day!" she calls. 

"Um," Niall says, eloquently.

Zayn grins. "Cheers," she tells Perrie, holding her cigarette out of the way and leaning in to kiss her cheek. "You're a lifesaver. Go and record another number one."

"On it," Perrie says, and then they're off.

"So," Zayn says, once their van is around the corner and out of sight. "Do you regret getting up now?"

"I'd punch you if you weren't holding coffee," Niall says. "You could've given a girl some warning."

"Eh," Zayn says. "I can still remember the first time Selena came over to our house and Jade was stood right inside the door, she almost couldn't talk at all. You get used to it."

"We haven't all dated international superstars," Niall grumbles, but she's smiling. "Why did they come by, anyway?"

"To give us coffee," Zayn says. "Also I needed a change of clothes and I left my suit from earlier at Perrie's when we had a pyjama party on that night off you insisted on."

"Ah," Niall says, and they stand in a companionable silence while Zayn finishes her cigarette, quickly.

And then there's a flurry to prepare, sucking down the coffees and eating the pastries – two extremely buttery and moist almond croissants, still a little warm, even – and brushing their teeth in the loo. Zayn makes a valiant attempt at sponge-bathing with the paper towels in the dispenser while Niall laughs, scrubbing at her face and her chest and under her arms as much as possible.

Niall shuts up when Zayn shimmies out of her clothes from the previous day and pulls on the freshly laundered suit that Perrie brought her, and Zayn smirks to herself as she reapplies her makeup in the dingy mirror. 

She almost leaves off doing up her lips, just so that she can kiss Niall before they head out into their day, but after a long moment checking out Niall while she draws off her shirt, back turned to Zayn, and switches it out with the spare shirt she keeps in her office, "In case I spill food," Zayn sighs and uncaps her lipstick.

"We probably shouldn't make a habit of kissing at work, should we," she says, after she's pressed her lips together to spread the colour, moving on to trying to make sense out of her hair.

"Probably," Niall says, coming up to stand next to Zayn. She rests her hand at the small of Zayn's back and, eyes glinting, darts into press a kiss at the corner of her mouth anyway. "You ready?"

"Yeah," says Zayn, eyes crinkling into a smile. "Let's do this."

They stand next to each other besides the projection screen after they've made their presentation, arms flush together, watching Simon anxiously as he purses her lips.

"Well, ladies," he says, finally. "Zayn, you're still in touch with Liam Payne, yes?"

"Yes, sir," Zayn says, suppressing a confused frown. "He's one of my best mates. I visit him several times a week."

"He's doing well?"

"Getting better daily," she says, hooking her thumb into her waistband to keep from fidgeting around with her hair. 

"Good," Simon says. "Tell him to hurry up and get back here, since apparently he's now got a spot waiting for him on the production team for this game."

Zayn's jaw drops and her heart leaps up into her throat. Her mouth works for a while, and then: "Yes, of course," she says. "I'll tell him right away."

" _Thank_ you," Niall adds, leaning into Zayn's side ever-so-slightly harder. "Seriously, thank you."

"This is a good concept," Simon tells them. "I rather like the ending you've got planned, too. Now you just need to up the gameplay time significantly and flesh it all out, but you've got a great start here." He pauses, makes a note on his ipad. "I'll assign the team straightaway, but you two are managing this. Okay?"

Zayn smiles.

+++

They celebrate that night in Liam's hospital room. Harry is there again, and Louis comes by with Selena on their way to a date. Zayn tells everyone what Simon said, and Harry grins.

"We're about to introduce leg strengthening exercises," he says, resting a large hand on Liam's knee, gently. "Get him walking as soon as possible."

"Walking or no," Liam says. "I'm coming back to work as soon as they let me."

"Good," Niall says. "I won't have to deal with this great sadsack all the time, then." But she slips a hand into the back pocket of Zayn's jeans as she talks, grinning almost aggressively at everyone, lest they comment on her actions. 

"You'll celebrate for a day and come back begging me to come back to you right after that," Zayn says, shrugging. She slouches down and rests her head on Niall's shoulder.

They fill little paper cones with water from the fountain down the hall and toast the news, laughing and talking until Louis and Selena realise they're about to miss their reservations and they make their way out of the room. 

And then Niall drags Zayn to her flat, as it's closer, but Zayn doesn't really get a good look at anything, because Niall is pushing her into the bedroom and pulling off her clothes and spreading Zayn apart with her tongue, so it's not like Zayn can focus on anything else.

Zayn desperately wants to make Niall come over and over again throughout the entire night, from her tongue and her fingers and even just her knee pressed hot against Niall's crotch as she grinds down against Zayn's leg, desperately, but after the first time they fuck, Niall fucking into Zayn with her tongue and her fingers, Zayn sucking Niall's tits till Niall pushes her face away, rubbing tight concentric circles around her clit, they're both so tired from working so late the night before that they crash, Niall snoring lightly against Zayn's chest, Zayn's arm around Niall's waist as she drifts away into sleep.

+++

"Hey," Niall says, walking up to Zayn. Zayn is stood in front of Liam's door again, surveying the collage of messages their coworkers have all left him. "What's up? Ready for lunch?"

Zayn turns and smiles. She's still reeling from the mindblowing sex she and Niall had the night before, and the way that she just fell asleep like it was nothing after that.

One of these days, Zayn is really going to have to go to her own home and do her own washing and stop wearing other girl's clothes, but not today. Today, she's perfectly comfortable in a pair of Niall's loose professional trousers and one of her nicer tops. 

"Yeah. I've got this," she tells Niall, holding up a piece of paper. It's the tentative logo with the working title of their game. She spent all morning sketching it and colouring it and cutting it out until it looked perfect. She's just scanned it into her computer, for reference's sake. "I'm about to pin it up somewhere in this mess."

"Do it front and centre," Niall says, so Zayn presses it against the wall and pushes a pin into it.

"Well," she says, stepping back once the job is done and wrapping an arm around Niall's shoulders. "Now the hard work begins, I suppose."

"Now the hard work begins," Niall agrees. She leans into Zayn's touch, incrementally. "Are you ready to get to it?"

Zayn considers the question for a moment, then grins. "Yeah," she says. "I really, really am."

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to take the opportunity to link to the accompanying fanmix one more time:
> 
> [](http://8tracks.com/batgirled/experience-points)  
>   
> here  
> 
> 
> Also, if you made it this far - thank you so much! This has truly been my baby for the past few months, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it xx
> 
> [lj](http://el_em_en_oh_pee.livejournal.com) | [tumblr](http://dulosis.tumblr.com)


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